


for deeper thirsts

by airbefore



Category: Castle
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e09 Kill Shot, F/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2020-08-18 19:37:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 86,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20197024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airbefore/pseuds/airbefore
Summary: Co-written by chezchuckles and airbeforePost- Kill Shot season 4 AU."There is the voice you can still summon at will, like yourmother's,it will always whisper, you can't have it all,but there is this."- You Can't Have It All - Barbara RasBeckett and Castle take what they can, where they can.





	1. Kill Shot

** _ BECKETT_ **

_Listen, people are dying out there. I don’t have time to get all weepy over a couple of scars. _

** _BURKE_ **

_Okay, so what’s the alternative? Walking around feeling like you have crosshairs on your back? Thinking that every glint off a window is a sniper scope?_

** _BECKETT_ **

_Look, there’s got to be a pill out there or something, right? Something to take the edge off?_

** _BURKE_ **

_Medication can help. But not right away._

** _BECKETT_ **

_Well then, what?_

** _BURKE_ **

_Well, for one, I think you should consider stepping away from the case._

** _BECKETT_ **

_You don’t think I can handle this?_

** _BURKE_ **

_I’m saying you don’t have to. You’re not the only cop in the city, Kate._

** _BECKETT_ **

_Okay, then, you know what? I’m fine._

* * *

Beckett woke.

An alarm somewhere. A discordant note burring in her ear.

Overheated, the sweat cloying, hair clinging to her neck, the grimy one-two punch of dehydration and hangover. She was flat out in her own bed, that much she knew. There was an obscuring headache for the rest. 

She opened her mouth, pushed her tongue against her teeth and tasted her own breath. 

The phone.

Her phone was ringing. It was sweaty and hot and her phone was ringing.

When she rolled over to get it, she met the hard warm body of a man.

_Castle _.

She jerked back and nearly fell out of bed, smacked an elbow into the side table, the world rocking. Her phone was trilling on the bedside table.

Rick Castle. Still there. In her bed.

She got a leg under her before she could collapse, heart pounding and mouth sock-dry, stared at him. A felled tree in her bed, his back to her, naked, though she didn’t dare look (she really wanted to look), and spread over most of the mattress.

Beckett eased around the foot of the bed to reach her phone but she stumbled against the bedpost, vivid flashes of memory.

Of him. His belt, the fury on his face, her blood. _ Him. _

Richard fucking Castle.

Oh, _ God _, they had. Fucked. They had fucked. 

It was coming back to her now.

Beckett scraped a shaky hand through her hair, held it off her neck as she tried to think, to just think it through. They’d had sex. Shit, okay, what else? 

She had _ begged _ him. And then he had begged her, oh yes, oh God yes, but no, she had to think. _ Think. _There had to be a way out.

But she didn't have a chance.

He flinched into wakefulness, rolled onto his back as if to get away from the harsh burr of her cell phone. His eyes darted around the room and then landed on her. A heartbeat where they stared at each other. 

He swallowed, slowly sat up. "Hey.” And when she only gaped at him, “Gonna answer that?"

She grabbed her phone and answered without looking, turning her back on Castle in her bed. “Hello?” _ Castle. _ In her bed. She was entirely too sober right now.

“This is Kim, with Dr. Burke’s office. I’m calling to let you know we can work you in today.”

She was being worked in? Oh yes, after her monumental screw-up, Beckett had blindly called her therapist’s exchange, talked with the sweet but unhelpful lady on call for Dr. Burke. After being talked through a panic attack, she wasn’t sure what she’d done. Crawled back into bed apparently. Too drunk to make better choices. 

“Detective Beckett? We need you to come in first thing. It’s Dr. Burke’s policy.”

Kate swallowed roughly. “First thing?”

“We’ll see you at seven-thirty.”

She twisted back to the bed, phone clutched against her, like that was enough to cover her scars. “You need to go. I have to go. I have an emergency.” She ran for the bathroom and shut the door on him.

When she turned on the shower, she made sure the door was locked.

* * *

_(Last night...) _

“You said… tell you when I needed you,” she rasped. Her fingers were numb; she could feel the blood trickling down to her elbow. She had her back against the wall, her gun in her hand, pressed up against her cheek, everything shaking.

“Beckett?” he said over the phone, his voice a burr. “It’s the middle of the night—”

“I need you.”

* * *

Blood trickled from her wrist; hot, sticky rivulets trailing across her palm. It gathered in the crevasses and lines. Stained her skin. Made the butt of her gun slick under her unsteady fingers. 

She was on fire. Burning from the inside out. Her body buzzed with the heat of it, every muscle and nerve and vein teetering on the brink of spontaneous combustion. She poured the whiskey down her throat, tried to fight the flames. To suppress them. Silence that chorus of voices echoing from the embers, beckoning her to join them, to finally let the hypnotic flicker consume her. 

Thunderous pounding rattled her front door. She dove for the floor, elbows and ribs slamming into hardwood. Her back teeth collided and her vision went white. The barrel of her Glock swayed as she aimed. 

“Beckett!”

More pounding. Teeth rattling. 

She shifted, needles of glass from the now-broken whiskey bottle stabbing at her thighs. Some of it soaked through the knees of her jeans. 

“Beckett, open up!”

Castle.

“Beckett, open the damn door or I'm using my key!”

Fresh blood gushed from the slash on her wrist. When she planted her hands on the floor, the ragged seams split further open, spilling out even more of her. Keys jingled from the hallway. Her bare feet scrambled for purchase and she spit out a curse when her elbows buckled. He couldn't find her like this. 

Fresh air and bright light cut through the entryway. 

“Beckett?” 

Too goddamn late. 

The door slammed. The world spun. Her body fought against every command her panic- and alcohol-soaked brain sent it. The betrayal of her muscles and ligaments and limbs wasn't even close to being new but fuck if it wept like a fresh wound every single time. She laid there, broken and bloodied, unable to even get the weight of her own body off the damn floor. 

“Beck- Jesus! Kate!” The furniture shook when he ran to her. Her stomach rolled. “Are you okay?” 

Hands—warm, soft, far more gentle than she deserved— wrapped around her biceps. Pulled her upright. His face swam in front of hers and her eyes lurched away, the shame too heavy. Too much. It was always just too much. 

“I’m fine,” she told him, the lie slipping easily through the groove it had worn on her tongue. “What’re you doing here?” 

The grip of his fingers tightened and lighting bolts of electricity shot through the dark numbness. It crackled in the pit of her stomach, set off alarm bells in her head. 

“You called me. You said—you said you needed me. So.” 

So. There he was. Of course. Because he was—

But she was—

Fuck. 

“What the hell happened here, Beckett?”

Nothing he needed to know about. 

“Nothing. I’m—It’s fine. Just go home, Castle.” 

His hands—oh god, his hands—traveled down the length of her arms, and the sound of his skin rasping against hers made her shift, press her thighs together. 

“You’re bleeding.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Would you stop fucking saying that? You are clearly not fine, Beckett.” 

The flash of steel in his voice pushed her off balance, sent her rocking back into the arm of the couch. His fingers clamped around her forearms to hold her steady. He was always holding her steady. The pad of his thumb pulled at the jagged edge of the gash on her wrist and she yelped—the single most pathetic sound she’d ever made in her thirty some odd years of life. 

“Fuck,” Castle hissed when he turned her arm over and got his first real look at the wound. “What is this? What did you do?” 

Betrayal. That was the only word for the look on his face. Complete and total betrayal. 

“I cut—It was an accident.” 

His knees popped when he pushed to his feet, hands still gripping her. 

“We’re going to the hospital.” 

Like hell they were. 

She tried to pull away, to wrest herself from him. To extricate her body—her heart—from his grip. But the booze and the adrenaline crash and the plain truth that she just didn’t want to left her weak and limp on the floor, her body not her own to control. 

But still she tried. “No. I’m not going to a hospital.”

“You need stitches. And a tetanus shot. And -” 

“No, Castle. No hospital.” 

Not with that kind of injury. The last fucking thing she needed was an involuntary seventy-two hour hold. 

“Look,” she said, finally getting her legs to work. He took part of her weight as she stood, and she let her body sway into his. “I have a first aid kit. I’ll clean it and glue it. Wrap it. It’ll be fine.” 

Castle’s head cocked to one side and he scoffed. “You’re going to glue yourself together? Really?” 

For the first time since he’d come in, she let herself meet his eyes. “It’ll be fine.” 

“I hate that fucking word.” Castle stepped back, but not away (never away), guiding her through the detritus of her breakdown. 

She let him. Let him steer her into the short hall, the bathroom. The heat of his body pushed her along, somehow made the steps easier to take. 

“Sit,” he told her, pointing at the closed lid of the toilet. 

She dropped, eyes squinted against the harsh glare of the overhead lights. Castle opened drawers and cabinets and she just watched him, all the energy she’d usually expend fighting for her privacy sapped by her hours long-panic attack. Goddamn PTSD. Goddamned sniper case. She’d been doing so—okay, maybe not good but at least better than this. 

“Far left drawer,” she finally offered. “By the door.” 

He yanked it open without acknowledging her, pulled out the little red basket of medical supplies. A black box fell out with it and Castle stooped over to grab it. The sharp intake of air when he picked it up jogged her memory as to what else she stored in that drawer, and it brought a tingling zip of heat to her cheeks. 

He tossed the box of condoms back without comment but she saw the slight shake of his hand when he reached for the first aid basket again. 

Kneeling on the floor in front of her, his lumberjack frame folded into the tight space between her toilet and tub, Castle dressed her wounds. He wrapped a clean hand towel around the cut on her wrist, mumbled at her to hold the pressure while he cleaned and checked all the little lacerations on her feet and arms. Wet washcloth, peroxide, neosporin—he worked methodically, never speaking, never stopping. 

“Now give me your arm.” 

She held it out dutifully. Like a child. 

Castle unwrapped the towel, hissing along with her as the rough weave of the terrycloth caught at the torn edges of her skin. The cut somehow looked more dangerous after he’d wiped away all the blood. Too long, too perfect. 

Too intentional. 

“Beckett, what the hell did you do?” The anger in his voice, the pain, gave her a sick little thrill that made her want to vomit. 

“I didn’t do -” 

“The hell you didn’t.” The heat of his words was tempered by the anguish in his eyes when he looked up at her. “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb. We both know what this—” he lifted her wrist up between their faces “—is.” 

“I—” 

“You what?” He cut off her anemic excuse, nostrils flaring. “You wanted me to be the one to find you? But you got too drunk and couldn’t finish the job? Is that it?” 

What the fuck? “No, Castle—” 

“I’m not watching you die again, Kate,” he ground out, teeth clenched and a vein pulsing on the side of his neck. She had the insane urge to bite it, to run her tongue over the thin, salty skin. “I’m not fucking doing it.” 

“I didn’t—That’s not why I called you.” 

“Then why did you?” 

The air in the bathroom pressed down on her, a thick blanket of all the things she wanted and needed to say but couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It made her want to curl into herself, pull her legs and arms to her chest and just huddle in a dark corner. 

“Why did you call me tonight, Beckett? Huh? Why?” 

Her lips were on his before her brain even finished giving the command, her free hand clawing at the back of his head. Desperate. Everything about it—about her—was desperate. But for once she didn’t fucking care. This was why she had called him. This was why she’d wanted him here. Needed him here. This was why she always needed him. 

She couldn’t hold back the whimper when Castle ripped himself from her grasp. He pushed to his feet, towering over her in the cramped bathroom. Liquid fire pooled low in her gut as he stared down at her, while his eyes were wild and his chest shuddered, hands clenched into blanched fists at his sides.

“What the hell was that?” 

Her body moved with a fluidity she didn’t feel. She stood in front of him, thigh to thigh, chest to chest. The thick bulge of him pressed against her and she felt her knees give a little. With her uninjured arm, she reached between them, fingers skittering over the cotton of his t-shirt. She slipped under the hem, watched his eyes flash when her nails scraped the warm, bare skin of his stomach. 

“This is what I need tonight, Castle,” she said, pressing up onto her toes and dragging her mouth across the base of his throat. “This is why I called you.” 

“You’re drunk.” 

“No, I’m not.” 

Yes, she was. 

“Yes, you are.” 

He didn’t touch her but he didn’t have to. She could feel it, the way he wanted to. Tension pulled his body drum tight and Castle shifted, tried to put distance between their hips even as hers began a slow rock. 

“I drank but I’m not drunk. Not enough to matter, anyway.” 

“Beckett—” 

The hand she had on his stomach dipped below the waist of his jeans and he groaned, finally—_ finally _—moving to grip her. His fingertips dug into her thighs and she felt his adam’s apple bob against her mouth. She scraped her fingernails through the deliciously thick trail of hair leading into his boxers. 

“I need to know I'm still alive.” 

Castle kneaded her thighs as she slid her other hand between their bodies. He groaned when she tugged on the zipper of his jeans, slipped her fingers through the slit. She sucked lightly at the protrusion of his clavicle even as her hand closed around the bulge of his half hard cock. His knees gave way and Castle tipped forward, sending her crashing into the edge of the vanity. She was pinned between his weight and the tiles pressing against the base of her spine. She let out a moan, head falling back on her neck. 

“Please, Castle,” she said, curling one leg around his and letting her other hand roam free over his torso, trying to take in the hard heat of him on top of her. Just the way she’d always imagined. “I need this. Just tonight.” 

“Kate.” 

“Please.” She would beg for it tonight. For him. “I need you, Rick. _ Please _.” 

Maybe it was the _ I need you _. Maybe it was his name. Maybe it was just the perfect storm of desperation and desire and years of denial. Whatever it was, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that it worked. He crashed down on her like a brick wall, nothing but heat and man and just— 

Castle. 

The pain—all of it—ceased to exist when his hand fisted in her hair, yanking her head to one side. His teeth scraped her neck, lips and tongue soothing the sharp sting of his bite. She moaned when his other hand molded around her breast, thumb finding her nipple through the fabric.

His stomach rippled under her own touch, the muscles contracting and relaxing as she ran her nails over him from waist to shoulder and back again. She reached for his jeans, body jostling against his as she fumbled with his belt.

“What are you doing?” Castle growled, head lifting. 

He stared down at her with dark, hooded eyes and she felt the wet rush of arousal drench her panties.

“What do you think I'm doing?” 

“I think,” he said, reaching down to grab her hands, “you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening here.”

He pulled her hands away from his body and stood up straight. Her stomach dropped.

“You think you're in charge. That we're doing this your way.” He scoffed, head jerking toward the vanity she was still pinned against. “That I'm just going to fuck you on this countertop, like some horny teenager at a house party.”

Castle pressed her arms backward, crossing them behind her back as he leaned in over her again, mouth just out of her reach. 

“You're wrong, Beckett.” 

* * *

He wanted to throttle her with both of his damn hands.

But instead he jerked her back to the toilet seat where he shoved her down on the lid once more. She rocked forward as if to stand and he pushed her back, narrowing his eyes. “_ Stay _.” 

Castle moved back to that little red basket of first aid supplies, half because he needed a damn minute to get his erection under control and half because there was a panicky part of him that couldn’t stop seeing the perfect line of smoothly cut flesh along one of the major veins in her arm.

Parallel, not across, the way his book research had always told him worked best. Fastest. The most efficient way to kill yourself was to run the blade straight up the arm.

“What are you doing?” she called out. 

He pretended he didn’t hear the shake in her voice. “I don’t want you bleeding on me.” And because he didn’t want to be scared shitless, because he wanted it to be true—that she’d merely wanted him, and not wanted him to find her body—he was going to do this.

He was going to give her what she wanted.

(He wanted it too, but first, he wanted to not come in his pants like a teenager.)

She was staring at him with wounded eyes when he turned around. He ignored it and peeled the backing off the butterfly bandages, grabbed her by the arm. She was docile, which should worry him, but he couldn’t get far enough around his anger and lust to untangle her motivations right now.

He wrapped the butterfly bandages in white gauze and used the clear surgical tape to keep it there. Then he roughly pulled her to her feet. “When I tie you up for me, I don’t want you bleeding through that bandage, Kate. You hear me?”

Her mouth dropped open. But he felt the sway of her body into his space, saw the throb of her pulse at the hollow of her throat, could practically see the arousal wash over her once more. She tried to speak and her voice came out broken; she had to clear her throat and try again. “Tie me up?”

“I said it’s on my terms, not yours, did I not?”

“I… yes.” Her tongue darted out and craftiness flashed in her dark eyes. Rainbows in oil slicks, sudden brilliant beautiful color he’d never expected to find. “You want it rough, Castle? Somehow I never imagined that.”

He growled. “You’ve imagined it though.”

High spots of color on her cheeks told him he’d struck too close, too intimate. She wanted to fuck him, she’d called him over here so she could fuck him on her own terms, and she didn’t want to spill her heart’s secrets?

Fine. He could do that.

Because not wanting her wasn’t an option. Walking _ away _ from her wasn’t an option.

“Kiss me,” she husked. “In ways I’ve never imagined.”

He crashed into her, slammed her bodily to the wall with the force of his need. Unleashed, no more waiting. He devoured her, letting the clash of teeth and the taste of whiskey fuel his desire and rage in circles. 

But oh God, the warm slide of her tongue as she fought back, writhing against the full press of his body, the way she moved even half-drunk was enough to have him hard again.

She pulled away, head thumping to the wall, breathing fast. “Imagined that one already,” she said.

“You baiting me, Beckett?” He gripped her thighs and she caught on fast, hiking her leg over his hip and doing that dark grind again. “Bait away.” He pushed his thumb in against the seam of her jeans and rubbed furiously, searching for that elusive—

She cried out, a sharp buck of her hips.

“Ha,” he breathed, sucked a hard spot at her collarbone. Triumph made him reckless, rolling a fierce circle over that place between her legs as she tightened and rattled in the cage made of his body and the wall and finally—

That she came so explosively was sobering at first. Made him check the rage and ease up, a faint _ oh God what now _ like a heartbeat in his stomach. She leaned a cheek against his and blew a hot breath out against his ear, but her hands clenched in fists at his back, just under his shirt, as if she had to brace herself.

“Fuck that,” he growled, and picked her up.

She grunted, but her leg tightened around his hip, the other quickly coming up to wrap around his waist. His arms bore most of her weight; she was heavier than in his fantasies, a solid and strong mass that just kept _ moving _ against him. Plucking at his chin with her teeth, nudging in against his throat, something animal about her noises, her seduction, that pulled the fury up in him again.

She smelled like whiskey and blood and she’d called him for _ this _. For this.

He carried her out of the bathroom, down that short connecting hall, and into her bedroom.

Her _ bedroom. _He almost dropped her.

He hadn’t seen her bedroom before, not to _ be in it _. Glimpses when he’d shown up unannounced and she had to grab a pair of shoes to go back out with him again. Glimpses where he’d tried not to be obvious about his curiosity. But now.

Oh, hell, her bedroom was _ pretty _. He hadn’t imagined pretty. Delicate in a way that shouldn’t be Beckett. But was so Kate.

She moaned against his neck and rocked her hips. He staggered and tried not to drop her, realized he was _ more _ pissed now than he’d been seeing that clean cut at her wrist. 

He gripped her hips and shoved—she gasped, tried to clutch at him for purchase—and he tossed her onto the bed.

She bounced hard, sprawling back on her elbows, the black-wood bedstead giving a low groan. He yanked on the hem of his shirt and pulled it off over his head, about as fast as he’d put it on tonight, in a panic over the way she’d sounded on the phone. 

Dangerous.

Well, he could be too. This whole thing was dangerous.

She sat up and licked her lips when he reached for his jeans. She came up on her knees when he unthreaded the belt, and her hair, disheveled and wavy around her shoulders, gave the perfect halo of wanton fucked-upness to this whole scene.

He ripped the belt off and listened to the leather sing, but he kept his eyes on her, studying her as he’d never studied her before.

Her pupils were blown wide even in the lamplight falling on her face. Her breasts were full and seemed fuller with every breath, and now she was discarding her t-shirt, showing him the black sports bra beneath. He could see the hard points of her nipples against the material, and he had to press the heel of his hand to his crotch for some relief.

“Pants,” he told her, nodding. Her pants.

She obeyed, sitting on her heels to reach for the button of her jeans, tilting back to push them down. She struggled with it, and he let her, judging just how drunk she was, but it wasn’t the whiskey. Her hands were shaking and her eyes kept darting to his hands where he gripped the belt by its buckle and stroked the leather.

She got frustrated fast, dropped back to the mattress with a huff. “Can’t you fucking _ help _ me?”

He came in beside the bed, still standing, looming, and he reached for the waistband of her jeans and yanked. She yelped as she got dragged to the edge of the mattress, rucking the navy bedspread, but he didn’t relent until the jeans were pulled off her feet.

And then he grabbed her by the wrist of the arm she’d cut open, and he dragged her back to the head of the four-poster bed. He lashed the belt to the right post of the frame with her wrist trapped in it. She stared at him and then jerked against the belt he still held tightly in one fist. 

“What did I say, Beckett, about writhing too much in your bonds?”

“You’re really tying me up?” She glanced up at the bandaged part of her wrist and then touched the leather with two fingers as if she couldn’t believe it was real. “That’s how you want to do this?”

“I want you to not use that arm, _ and _ I want it elevated for a while.” He leaned in close and couldn’t resist caressing her cheek, easing the hair back behind her shoulders, something tight in his chest. “We’re going to fuck pretty hard, Kate, and I can’t be worried about you bleeding out on me.”

She stared at him. For a heartbeat, he thought she was sobering up fast, too fast, and she was going to call it off.

(Maybe he wanted her to.)

But instead, her tongue darted to her lip and the predatory look came into her eyes once more. “Then maybe you should get those pants off, Castle.”

He stepped back, all gentleness evaporating under the heat of that gaze. But— “Not for you to decide, Beckett, is it?” He sat down at the edge of the bed as if they were going to have a conversation. His fingers trailed over her bare inside thigh, light and easy. “You asked for this. You wanted me here to find you like this. Why is that? Because you thought, if I really saw you, I wouldn’t _ want _you so desperately?”

She trembled. The barest flicker of skin under his fingers but it was also the look in her eyes.

He slid a finger under the elastic of her panties and ran it back and forth at the crease of her leg. “Did you think that if I saw you at your lowest, I’d stop coming around? I’d abandon you too?”

She froze.

He made a fist in her panties and shook his head. “Oh no, Kate. That’s not how this works. And I think I need to _ prove _ to you I’ll be here.” He eased the fist and flattened his hand against her stomach, leaning in. “I can smell you.” 

She whimpered, her eyes slamming shut. 

He kissed the corner of her mouth and she turned eagerly for it, meeting him, her free arm winding around his neck as if she could _ make _ him get closer, be closer. He let the kiss distract her, distract himself a little too, the hot forever of tongue and lips, the wet heat of promise.

And then he pushed his fingers between her legs and found all that was holy.

She cried out, tearing away from his mouth to arch. He rubbed the wet soft folds of her sex with two fingers, his hand cupped under her panties and curved as if to shield her. Her arm tightened around his neck, the bedstead hitting the wall even as she moved, rising into his fingers, gasping.

“I’m going to give you another one,” he husked at her jaw. A rough kiss down to her ear as he breathed the musk of arousal, the humid scent of her filling the air between them. “As a promise. Whatever you need, Kate. You call me.”

“Oh God,” she gasped.

“I can give it to you.”

“Oh, _ yes _.” Her hips rocked into his hand, her own rhythm now, the arm around his neck pulling her up into him. “Oh, God, it’s so good.”

“It can always be this good.”

“Castle,” she gasped. “Castle.”

He eased up, missing her clit on purpose a few times, just to hear that whine and feel the shaking in her body. He leaned in and kissed the corner of her eye, touched his tongue to the tear trembling there. “I’ll be here.”

“_ Please. _”

He made a rough pass over her folds and plunged his fingers inside her. She broke with an astonished cry, and he worked her orgasm to its last dregs, worked until her knee came up and she crushed his hand between her thighs.

He still had two fingers inside her.

* * *

He wouldn't stop.

Once she broke open the seal, gave them both the permission she'd spent years denying—he wouldn't stop.

She should have known. 

“Castle,” she pleaded, her thighs clamped around his hand and body shuddering, “I can't. I can't. You have to—oh, God. Oh fuck.”

His fingers, those thick fingers with the keyboard-calloused pads, curled inside her. Twisted. Hit her perfectly square, an arrow straight to the center of the bullseye. Again. And again. Every muscle in her body quivered with it, with him. With what he could do to her. For her. If only she’d let him. 

“You can. You will. If you think this is where this ends tonight, Beckett—” 

The broad pad of his thumb swept feather light across her clit and she screamed. Primal and dark and dirty. It clawed at her vocal cords, made her teeth vibrate in their sockets. She arched and writhed, her body possessed by him. Her nails sank into the back of his neck and her legs fell open. 

“See,” Castle cooed in her ear, five o’clock shadow scraping at her skin. “I knew you could do it. Good girl.” 

Her mouth was a desert. Her throat raw. She licked her lips, tried to speak, to say—something. Anything. But all she could do was pant and wait for the trembling between her legs to stop. 

Castle extricated himself from the python grip of her arm around his neck. The bed shifted and she fell back against the headboard, her body limp and useless. The back of her head rolling against the slick black wood, she tracked him as he moved to the chair next to her bed. He sat and settled in, filling the patterned wingback with his broad frame. Ankle propped on opposite knee, he laced his fingers together over his naked stomach and looked around the room. 

“You have a lot of knickknacks.” 

What the fuck—

“I never expected that. It’s strange.” He reached out, touched the paper-mache bird on rocker legs she’d gotten from that eclectic little boutique in Santa Fe. It rocked unevenly, an almost perfect counterpoint to the staccato bump of her heart. “But also oddly fitting for you. I like it.” 

“Castle—” 

“Where’d you get all these?” He picked up an ornate vase, the delicate glass dwarfed by his paw of a hand. “Are you a collector of strange things, Kate?” 

A pause. 

She licked her lips and the bedstead hit the wall as she shifted, canted her sweaty, half-naked body in his direction. His eyes crawled the length of her and she watched as the hair on his bare chest rose into spikes. 

“I guess I’m evidence enough of that,” he said, a strained little chuckle pushing the words through his tight smile. “Everything about us is strange. Tonight—this—really was never going to be any different, was it?” 

Castle leaned forward. Eyes locked on hers, he bent down and reached for his shoes, slowly untied one and then the other. Off they came, then the socks. Castle tucked them under the chair and stood. Her throat went dry when he reached for the button of his jeans. Her chest hitched when he hooked his thumbs into the waistband and pushed. 

“Castle,” she mewled—fucking _ mewled— _straining against the tension of her bond. “Come back to bed. Please.” 

She was already ridiculously, embarrassingly drenched and could feel herself just getting wetter as they stared at each other, the air so thick that she could hardly draw breath without tasting it. _ Them. _

“What am I going to do with you, Beckett?” He asked, feet firmly planted, hard cock resting heavy against his right thigh. Her mouth watered at the sight of him, naked and tall and commanding. 

“Fuck me,” she suggested, the vulgarity coming up from the depths of her with ease. It was what she wanted. What she craved. 

From him. 

Only from him. 

“Oh, I very much plan to,” Castle laughed. It never reached his eyes. “But what am I going to do with you, Kate?” 

Castle moved to the foot of the bed, every step slow and deliberate. She watched him walk, watched the way the muscles in his legs and ass—oh fuck his ass—moved under the smooth, pale skin. When he planted his fist on the mattress and crawled over the footboard, his shadow moved slowly across the bedspread. She shifted back against the headboard and slid her legs apart to make room for him between her thighs.

She had to fight to keep her eyes open, to keep them on him as he loomed over her. When he planted one hand next to her head on the headboard, she felt the heft of his erection press against her inner thigh. 

“What,” he whispered, one finger caressing the length of her bound arm, “am I going _ to do _?” 

He took her mouth, savage and hot. Possessive. He consumed her. Took what he wanted with his lips and teeth and tongue and then went back for more. And more. Denying her air. 

She moaned into it, body opened wide for him. Her untethered hand roamed. She touched every inch of him she could reach, fingers flitting from patch of skin to patch of skin like a hummingbird. 

Her fingers closed around the base of his cock. The deep, guttural groan he released into her mouth almost made her come again. She stroked him once, twice, and then his hand wrapped around her wrist, yanked her away. 

“No.” 

She whined. “Goddamnit, Castle.” 

“This isn’t your show, Beckett.” His chest rumbled against hers as he growled. “For fucking once in our lives, I'm in control.” 

Cold air swept over her when he pushed back onto his haunches. His nails scraped at her hips, fingers slipping under the elastic waist of her panties. Her ass lifted from the bed and he slid them down. Off. She watched as he brought them to his nose and breathed in, the corners of his mouth curling up into a knowing smile. The plain black cotton took flight, landed on the pile of his discarded clothes. 

“What can I say.” The tips of his fingers ran back up the insides of her legs. “I too am a collector of strange souvenirs.” 

His hands wrapped around her knees. They stared at each other. 

He pushed and she gave easily, letting him press up and out. Her legs like butterfly wings at her ribs. Castle’s eyes flicked down and her stomach did a pirouette when he licked his lips. 

It was the all the warning she got. 

His mouth hit her inner thigh first. Open and wet. He used his tongue, his teeth. He bit and licked and teased—up one thigh, across the shallow valley between her hips, down the other— until she was begging for him, hand fisted in his hair and on the verge of tears. 

The first swipe of his tongue across her clit brought her off the bed. The edges of his belt cut into her skin as she strained against it, lungs arrested and her heart in her throat. Castle held her open with one hand and pressed the other to her stomach, a vain attempt to hold her still. 

“_ Castle. _” 

A solitary finger slipped in under his mouth, slid inside. Curled. Her heel connected with his shoulder and he grunted, his hand sliding up the length of her torso. He painted a finger across her lips and she nipped at the tip, brushed her fingers through the sweat-damp hair along his forehead. Castle leaned into her touch, eyelids fluttering. 

“Rick.” 

Blue eyes slammed open. 

Squinted. 

His tongue curled around her clit and a second finger joined the first. He sucked and twisted and she imploded. Her body shattered, the brittle pieces of her scattering across the bed. 

Everything outside of him—his mouth, his fingers (his love)—ceased to exist. 

* * *

Castle rubbed his jaw against her inside thigh, the taste of her so deep inside him he’d never be free of it. Of her. He lifted his head and stared up at her, feeling hunted, washed out somehow, even as his cock throbbed against her mattress.

She was still mostly sitting up at the headboard, and he could see where she had strained so hard against the belt that her fingers were blanched. Her head was tilted back, while her throat, pale and long, worked fast as she tried to get enough breath.

He thought he saw tears.

He wondered if they were his.

Castle sat back between her legs, his chest heaving as he battled to get it back together. To breathe through the cutting beauty of her body splayed in her bed for him, the sick sensation of knowing that he couldn’t own it for long.

He palmed her thighs, rubbed abrasively at the skin to make her shudder. Her chin came down and there was something broken in her eyes, something he’d exposed tonight, something she had fought so long to keep hidden.

His eyes tracked to her breasts, still filling the elastic of her sports bra. She made a noise in her throat that he knew was resistance but he couldn’t ignore the thing between them, the wounds still deep and raw as the day he had tried to save her in a cemetery.

Nothing could save them now. It was too late for resistance. 

He reached up; she shied back, but there was nowhere to go. He hooked his fingers under the sports bra, peeling it—

“No!”

Her voice cracked like a whip; he froze, his gaze locked on all he couldn’t see.

“Yes,” he said, his thumbs brushing feather-light under the heavy swell of her breasts. The elastic of the sports bra plunged her skin into shadows, but he would see, he would know. “Yes. You’ve hidden from me for the last time.” He lifted his gaze to hers, held it until the fear washed over her and set her trembling.

“Castle.” The plaintive way his name came from her breath, like she had no hope, this was her last ditch effort, made him think she was drowning.

“Either you believe or you don’t believe,” he said, fingers stroking the underside of her breasts. “Either you believe in me, or you don’t—”

“Just fucking do it,” she snarled. 

He rolled up the sports bra (it was entirely too loose; her ribs were sticks that barely held her body upright) and the shadowed valley between her breasts was caught in the light.

He stared. The contours of it, the angry red of it, the ghost images of dark welling blood when the EMTs had torn open her dress blues. A well of black blood, and it was as if this knot of skin couldn’t possibly be the only thing keeping it inside her body now.

He swallowed roughly. “Does it hurt?” Lifted his eyes to hers finally.

She had hers tightly shut, chin up but turned to the side, as if expecting a blow.

“Does it hurt,” he demanded, shaking her.

She gasped, her eyes flying open. A darkness in them he couldn’t seem to reach, no matter how soft, how kind, how understanding. A darkness he couldn’t touch.

Not when he loved her anyway.

“Do I need to make it hurt, Beckett?”

Her cheeks flushed hotly, her eyes turned molten. “I don’t know. Can you?”

“We haven’t even started,” he growled, and dipped her sports bra low enough to hook under her breasts. She winced, jerking as her breasts were pulled up and spilled out over the material, but she gave him the side-eye as if to say _ is that your worst? _

He lightly smacked the outside of her thigh and pulled her spread legs down into him. She gasped and bucked against the meeting of their groins; he had to clench his teeth just to keep from falling on her and grinding into that raw intimate sensation.

He gripped her thighs, enough to bruise, enough to keep her locked around his waist, and he gave her a little buck of his hips. She growled and arched, straining against the leather belt, her other hand fisting in the comforter.

He hadn’t even gotten _ in _ the bed. On it, but there had been no slow lovemaking, no taking his time to learn her body’s secrets. She had called him not for that, but for this.

For pain. Out of pain.

He roughly thumbed her clit and reached for his own cock. She shuddered and tried to move away from his inelegant pawing. He kept her in place, that tight ugly place in his chest matching the one branded on hers.

“I’m going to let you have it now,” he told her, warning. “I’m not holding back, Beckett, not even for that wound at your heart.”

Her eyes startled to his, _ too much _ seared in their depths.

He ignored that instinctive denial of hers and instead fisted his cock. He had one awful second where he wondered if he should get off the bed and stop this right here, if he shouldn’t walk away, or at the least get one of those damn _ condoms _, but he didn’t do that.

He didn’t do any of the sane, rational, _ right _ things he should have.

Because tonight, he was not a good man.

He angled his cock to the heat of her sex, and then he thrust, forcing himself inside.

* * *

Yes.

_Yes yes yes._

This was what she needed. What she wanted. Him. Moving so perfectly inside of her. Sliding, grinding, stretching. Filling her up until all the darkness in her chest, all the empty spaces, were obliterated by the sheer force of him. 

Her fingers twisted in the comforter, the tips going numb as she cut off their blood supply with the power of her grip. His hands burned against her thighs, bruised. She didn't care. Let him leave marks. Let the fingerprints on her skin match the ones inside her chest. 

“Is this what you wanted, Beckett?” 

His pelvis connected with hers, bone on bone, and Castle ground down, holding himself deep inside her.

“When you were out there on the floor with your bottle and your gun and your goddamn death wish, is this what you wanted? What you needed to save you from your own fucking self?”

_Yes._

“Castle,” she whined. Her hips rocked, sought the friction she so desperately needed. Goddamn him. “Move.”

He did but only to press against her harder, the full weight of him holding her still at that one hot, slick point of connection.

“Answer me.”

Her fingers closed around the leather strap of his belt and her ribs shuddered when she breathed. She opened her eyes. Met his. Castle stared at her, into her. Why did she have to say it? He knew. He always knew. 

That was the fucking problem. 

There was no hiding with him. Not really. There never had been. From the moment he’d profiled why she’d become a cop to now, she hadn’t truly been able to hide anything from him. She built walls and he dug holes. Brought ladders. Scaled the bricks with nothing but his bare hands and brute force. There was no keeping him out. And she was terrified. 

“Answer me, Kate.” 

“Yes,” she breathed, unable to look away. Unable to lie to him while he was buried to the hilt inside of her. When he was so painfully right. “_ Yes _.” 

His kiss was achingly gentle. 

And then nothing was. 

Castle sat back on his knees and gripped her hips, yanked her down onto her back. The belt pulled at her shoulder and she held onto it, sought grounding in the smooth, cool leather. One massive hand closed roughly around her breast, the pad of his thumb pressing hard against her scar. She cried out as his hips began to piston, rough thrusts meant to punish. To teach. 

“You don't get to do that,” he huffed, thick brown hair falling over his forehead. “You don't get to fucking do that, Beckett. Not now.” 

“Cast—” 

She choked on it, her throat to dry and her mind too far gone. 

“You don't die. That’s not how this goes.” 

His arm hooked under her one of her legs, brought her knee up to meet her bicep. Castle leaned in and she ran her hand over his shoulder, up the bulging cords in his neck. Her fingers threaded into his hair, thick and soft just like she remembered it from that alley a lifetime ago, and she held on tight. She hadn't killed herself, by some miracle, but this might. 

* * *

Castle gripped the leather belt with his fist, using it for leverage as he fucked her. He _ fucked _ her. Every thrust went deep. She was so tight around his cock that he had to grit his teeth and dart his eyes to that gauze around her wrist just to withstand it.

He was gonna make her come again. An orgasm for each year of their partnership, and then more, _ more _. She would fucking scream before this night was out.

He rose and fell over her, plunging into her as hard as he could, grasping the leather. She bent and lunged up for it, as eager for her punishment as he was to make her see the light. She was stretched taut from the bedframe, pinned by his body holding one of her legs straight. Pinning her down for him. She struggled, but she struggled to meet him. She writhed, and he knew she must be raw, chafed, but he didn’t fucking care. 

She had to know, she had to _ remember _ this. The next time she called with that _ I need you _ she would know this was the payment, this was how she would have him. She _ had _ to have him. She had to know he was always gonna show up; always gonna be here; always this damn _ deep. _

She groaned. His fingers dug into her hip, nostrils flaring as he yanked her against the leather’s resistance, forcing himself harder, higher. Her heel dug into his shoulder, her knee bent and pushed back nearly to her damn cheek, her moans getting louder, higher, breathier. She was wide open for him like this, she was _ wide open _.

She cried out, arching. Her mouth dropped open, pretty pink round mouth, her dark lashes fluttering. He felt it beginning, those contractions around him, the drag of her body trying to hold him in. 

God. She felt incredible. This was _ incredible. _

“Castle,” she gasped. Begging him for something more, else. He didn’t know what. She pitched her hips up as he drove inside her. A grunt they shared. “Castle.”

“You better come,” he growled. He wasn’t going to survive if she kept making those noises, kept _ looking _ at him like that. “Right now, Kate.”

She cried out. Her leg twisted around the back of his neck, impossibly strong, as she arced off the mattress.

He couldn’t last, not through that. He pulled out of her roughly, before this wound up being a mistake they had to raise together. She let out a gritted-teeth scream at the sensation of his withdrawal, but his orgasm was already chasing hers. Hard. 

Castle came across her thigh in a gut-wrenching release.

He dropped over her, shaking, fading.

* * *

Beckett bit her bottom lip and slowly angled her knee, wincing at the strain of muscles long unused. Her ribs tightened like a band, a torque ever tighter, and she couldn’t get a deep enough breath. 

The jittery jolt of panic was gone; it was definitely fucked out of her. But now—

Kate eased back against the headboard, finally able to get her leg straightened out. She had to brace herself against the post to get at the belt, but Castle, even unconscious, had a grip on the end that made it difficult.

She worked her wrist back and forth in the loop, finally pried the metal prong up on the buckle. She got it just loose enough to pull out her wrist, and the sudden release had her shoulder pinching sharply.

Castle was face-planted in her pillow. She didn’t know how long she’d been too dazed to even know where she was, _ who _ she was, but she knew she had to move.

She had to get out of this damn bed.

She finally escaped, stumbled and nearly pitched headfirst into the wardrobe. She caught herself on the chair, jerked her head back as she smelled it.

Her arousal between her legs, mingled with the scent of his come painted across her thighs, marking her. 

Beckett put a hand to her head, swaying, and stumbled down the connecting hall to the bathroom. She shut the door with a thump, blinked, twisted the lock just in case.

Her hands weren’t shaking, but…

Kate sank down on the toilet seat, idly played with the gauze on her wrist as she went to the bathroom.

Gauze. She peeled up the tape slowly and peeked at the wound. She’d cut herself on the broken glass… as she’d been scrambling across the floor for her fallen weapon. Broken glass from where she’d hit the deck from a horn or a slammed door, a gunshot that wasn’t a gunshot.

Kate blew out a breath and closed up the tape. No blood; he’d bandaged her perfectly. If she’d done it, she’d have been bleeding through the gauze and trying to hide it tomorrow at work with long sleeves.

She knew how it looked, but that _ hadn’t _ been her intention.

Beckett stood, flushed, washed her hands as she glared into the bathroom mirror. She had bruises on bruises, she had that smudged look of a woman thoroughly fucked, and she had a dark well of shame so deep she didn’t know how in the world they could possibly rise from this.

She dampened a washcloth and began erasing the proof of this night.

After she left the bathroom, she snagged her phone from the living room floor near the debris, the overturned table. Her white phone case was stained with bloody fingerprints.

She had called Castle in her darkest moment.

Now it was time to call someone else. Because clearly she was _ not _ fine.


	2. Cuffed

** _BECKETT_ **

_Um, I am a cop. I’m the one with the gun. Being first through the door is my job._

** _CASTLE_ **

_In the elevator? Look, how ‘bout this? Would it kill you to let someone open the door for you once in a while?_

** _BECKETT_ **

_You do realize that if somebody opens the door for me then I will be going through it first anyway, right?_

** _CASTLE_ **

_Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot. You have to be the smartest, too. Everything’s a competition with you._

* * *

Castle rocked back in his chair, socked feet swinging up to rest on the edge of his desk. A glass of scotch in one hand, a pervasive feeling of eerie calm smoldered in his chest. He had the loft to himself while his mother and Alexis were away, and he’d had a close encounter with his detective. A _ very _ close encounter. For a day that included being drugged, kidnapped, and trapped in a dark room with a tiger, it had been a pretty good one. 

Mostly because he had spent it cuffed—hitched—to Beckett, her warm, lithe body never more than an arm’s length from his. Closer than she'd allowed him in weeks. The scent of her—perfume and sweat and that dark, deep musk he recognized from only a handful of hours he’d once spent in her bed—still clung to his clothes. He’d caught whiffs of it every so often and had been forced to close his eyes against it, hand pressed to his groin to stave off his body’s reaction to the onslaught of memories. The ghost of her moving against him, wild and uninhibited and needy. So goddamn needy. 

From the moment he’d decided to give into her that night, he’d known how it would end. But it still had been a sock to the gut to watch her run. To hear the lock click on her bathroom door while he’d been naked in her bed. Exposed. It’d been hard not to feel—

Used. 

She had used him, taken what she'd needed in order to survive. Just like always. And he had let her. (Just like always.) Had offered himself up on a fucking platter for her consumption. 

Only Castle had been the one to consume, hadn't he? He’d been the one who had driven them over the cliff, steering into the skid she had started but he could have stopped. Probably should have stopped. 

But he hadn't had the will to stop. He never did with her. No matter how many times he got knocked on his ass, Castle kept getting up. Going back for more. Hoping that maybe she would finally see him, what he could give her. What they could give each other. 

Castle had tried only once to talk to her about it. A fool’s errand, no doubt, but that was him where Kate Beckett was concerned. A fool. And okay, maybe waiting until they were trapped together in her cruiser, stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, hadn’t been the best plan he had ever come up with but it was the only one he’d had. 

The speed at which she shut him down almost gave him whiplash. 

_ We’re not talking about it, Castle. Ever. _

But they would. Eventually. Even if he had to tie her to a bed again, they would talk about what had happened between them that night. Because ignoring it, pretending like he hadn’t touched her, tasted her,_ been inside _her—that wasn’t going to work for him. Not when she kept looking at him the way she’d done in that basement today. 

She didn't know how poorly she concealed them, the feelings she was working so hard to fight. Control. Castle knew that as well as he knew his own name. She thought the bite in her voice dimmed the light in her eyes. That he was oblivious to the smiles she smothered and the laughter she swallowed. She was wrong. He saw, he knew. And he let it fuel him, let the promises just under the surface of those soft looks stoke the embers of _ someday _ that smoldered behind his ribs. 

A hard, sharp knock rang out. Castle jumped, scotch sloshing over the rim of his glass. The back of his chair hit the wall when he pushed away from the desk. Stomach in a knot, he made his way through the loft on autopilot, almost walking into furniture that had been in the same place for over a decade. 

There was only one person who would be showing up at his home at one in the morning on a Tuesday. 

The cold smoothness of the door knob grounded him. Castle took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Dragged himself up to his full height. Whatever this was, whatever she was here for—he was ready. 

He twisted the knob. Pulled. 

“Beckett.” 

“You’re an ass.” 

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t ready for that. 

“Wha—”

Beckett stalked forward, backing him into his own living room. His hand fell from the door and she slammed it behind her, the floor shaking as the slab of wood met its frame. She stood there in front of him, dressed in the same pale blue sweater and jeans, hair in loose waves around her shoulders, and fury sparking in her eyes. 

“You are an ass,” she repeated, each word punctuated with a slight step in his direction. “You had the nerve—” 

A hand disappeared into the pocket of her motorcycle jacket and came back out holding a familiar coil of brown leather. 

“Do you know how many men I’ve let tie me to a bed, Castle?”

Castle shook his head, mouth suddenly arid. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. Not with the way she was glaring at him, her cheeks colored with indignation and that one eyebrow he’d come to fear hiked up almost to her hairline.

“Two.” 

Castle swallowed his first instinct. The one that wanted to ask who the other man was. How he had done it, if she’d begged for it the way she had with him. 

“So don’t _ ever _,” Beckett growled, pressing the belt he’d used to lash her to her own bed into his abdomen like a brand, “tell me that I don’t let you lead, Castle. That I don’t give you control.” 

Her fingers fisted in his shirt around the belt and she pushed into him, mouth open and wet. Hungry. Castle caught her with an arm around the waist and took a step back to absorb the impact of her attack. Her hands crawled over him, left brush fires burning in their wake. The kiss was all teeth and tongue and he fought back against the brutality of it, gave her as good as he got. 

Castle tangled his fingers in her hair, slid the hand at her waist down to cup her ass. She groaned into his mouth and he grinned. Pressure against his stomach had him moving, stepping backward as she pushed his body farther into the loft with her own. The belt clattered to the floor somewhere near the coffee table. Her slim, nimble fingers went to work on the buttons of his shirt, rucking the tail out of the waist of his jeans. The back of his knees hit the couch and he went down, pulling her with him. 

Beckett straddled him, knees pressed into the cushions and hips grinding into his. He could already smell the musk of her, even through her jeans, and Castle slid a hand between them. He trailed over her abdomen, her waist, a mirror image of his path from earlier in the day when he’d taken the opportunity to caress her skin under the guise of investigating her puncture wound. He closed in on the apex of her thighs but Beckett’s hand grabbed his wrist before he could make contact. 

“Uh-uh,” she hummed, lips grazing across his jaw. “You wanted to go first, remember?” 

Castle felt every hair on his body come to attention. The tips of her fingers skimmed over his chest and his heart hammered against his ribs. He gripped her ass with both hands, tried to settle himself down before he either imploded or came in his pants. 

“Is that why you want to open doors for me, Castle?” She had his belt undone and was working on the button fly of his jeans. Her lips buzzed against his neck, the feathery ends of her hair tickling his chest as she curled her body over his. “Because if I go through while you hold the door, you get to look at my ass?” 

Castle curled his fingers and she pushed back into him, a delicious little whine coming from the back of her throat. He filed that away for later and shifted his grip, slipped one hand under the hem of her sweater and traversed the length of her spine. 

“It’s mostly to be polite.” His thumb circled a mole between her shoulder blades and she shuddered. “The ass thing is just a bonus.” 

Beckett sat up in his lap, gold flecks of mischief dancing in her eyes. Arms crossing over one another, she grabbed the hem of her sweater and lifted. He could only watch as she tugged it up and off, revealed herself to him in one smooth motion. She tossed it on the coffee table and shook out her hair, a sly smile twisting up one corner of her mouth. 

“See, and I always thought you were a breast man.” 

Castle stared at her: half naked in his lap, breasts spilling out of a lacy pink bra. Scars on full display. He slid a hand up her back again, flicked his wrist. The straps of the bra went slack and Beckett shrugged her shoulders, let it fall down. Away. 

His chest hitched. 

“I’m a simple man, Kate,” he said, eyes locked on hers as he leaned forward. “I enjoy any body part you’re willing to share.” 

Castle latched onto a nipple and her neck went slack, head falling back and back bowing. Fingers threaded through his hair and he’d only just brushed his thumb across her other breast when she curled her hand into a fist. Tugged. He disconnected from her with a wet pop and looked up to find Beckett shaking her head. 

“You bitch all day about wanting to go first but now you keep trying to give away your turn.” 

Planting her hands on his chest, she pushed. Castle watched with a growing sense of bereavement as she slid off his lap. Her knees hit the floor and his stomach jumped into his throat. Beckett leaned into him, mouth dragging trails of liquid heat over his stomach, and she reached for his fly. Her fingers slipped inside, closed around the bulge of his cock, and he bucked off the couch like an overeager teenager. 

He had to watch. Had to see her— 

Castle scraped his fingers through her hair, gathered the soft caramel waves into one manageable mass. Beckett looked up at him through thick lashes. Her fingers—so adept and crafty—slipped inside his boxers. His toes curled into the carpet and his quads flexed when she wrapped her fingers around the base of his cock, tugged him free. 

The first touch of her mouth was a jolt of electricity straight to the base of his spine. Castle’s abs spasmed and he bowed over her, an almost inhuman grunt forcing its way out of his lungs. Beckett worked him with her hands and mouth, hot and wet and a little bit frantic. He watched her, one hand full of her hair and the other stroking mindlessly over the soft lines of her bare shoulder.

Castle had fantasized about this a hundred times in a dozen different ways but nothing—absolutely _ nothing _—he had imagined could have ever possibly lived up to the sight of Kate Beckett looking up at him through heavy lidded eyes, bare breasts swaying and cheeks hollowed out with suction. 

“Beckett,” he groaned, trying to control the growing need to buck and jerk and writhe. “_ Fuck _, Kate. I’m gonna come if you don’t stop.” 

But she didn’t stop. 

He never wanted her to stop. 

* * *

There was something dark and dangerous about having this man by the balls, cock sliding in and out of her mouth, completely at her mercy. 

_ Especially _ when she still had the image of him looming over her, fucking her senseless, while she was bound to her own bed. The two overlapped, the two were nearly identical, like he was in control somehow even here. It wasn’t possible; _ she _ was in control, she’d started this, and he was making those rumbles in his chest as he fought to hold himself back.

She’d have him anyway; she would _ make _ him come. He couldn’t show up at her apartment a stalking tiger, and then go back to being that lazy tail-flicking predator with _ her _ as his fresh kill. (Damn, he still looked down at her like that predator, the darkness casting shadows across his face that made the lines deeper, the man more formidable.)

She wasn’t having that. 

Beckett stroked him with her tongue, pressed him to the roof of her mouth as she went down. She fondled his balls and hollowed her cheeks as she came up again, urging him to completion. In her mouth. She wanted him to come across her tongue so that she swallowed as much as possible before she _ choked _.

(She knew she would choke on him; he was already so thick and long that he didn’t fit, and the knowledge of how hard he could come, how explosive his orgasm, convinced her he was going to be too much for her to handle. Finally. Someone she couldn’t contain, someone who broke all her rules, someone who made her—)

“Beckett,” he warned. She clung to his thigh as his hips broke sharply toward her, into her. His cock hit the back of her throat and she gagged, taken off guard by the force of him. Before she had a chance to recover, his climax ripped through them both.

He tasted like a night spent fucked mercilessly.

She choked and swallowed convulsively, gripping the base of his cock as if she could stem the tide. She heard his high-pitched whine as he gripped her by the hair, felt his fingers digging into her shoulder, but she was captivated by the way his cock pulsed in her mouth.

Such release, such strength. 

When she could finally back off enough, she merely suckled at the last of him, her heart pounding in her throat. She was off her game, her head spinning, and he came out of her mouth with a clumsy jerk of her hand.

She’d never had so little finesse.

“Kate,” he breathed, the bellow of his lungs like he’d been washed ashore. “God. Kate.”

“Which is it?” she glibbed, but she sounded like a moron. She didn’t know what to say to that, because she felt as wrecked as he looked. And she hadn’t even come. She was limp against his inside thigh, eyes closed, and she realized she was petting his cock like it was a beast she hoped would bite. Daring.

Foolish.

She should never have come here. She’d thought to take back her power, but she was shaky and weak and sprawled half-naked in his lap and she didn’t know _ how _ he’d managed to make her feel so shook.

She dug a hand into her pants and touched herself, shuddering. She shouldn’t have come. Should never have fooled herself into thinking this was a good idea. 

Oh God, she needed this.

“Don’t you dare.” His fingers tightened in her hair and he tugged. Pulled her hand out of pants and gripped her by the wrist. “That’s my job.” His eyes were in shadows.

She curled her hand into a fist and he tilted forward, nipped her fingertips, licked at her arousal around the edges of her fist. Beckett whimpered, loosening her fist until he was sucking her own cream from her fingers.

She crawled up then, obedient, docile, stunned, straddling his thighs and letting him arrange her there. He unbuttoned her pants, slowly, as if she might spook, and pushed his own fingers into her panties.

She bucked, crying out, already so close. She was back to reeling; she tasted him on her tongue, felt the impression of his cock at the back of her throat. He worked two fingers through her folds and pressed his thumb to her clit. “Come on. Your turn now.”

She wound her arm around his neck and rocked her hips, trembling.

“That’s it, ride my hand for it.”

She pushed into him, whimpered when his fingers penetrated shallowly. Whined when he pulled back. 

“Come on, get yours, Beckett.”

She pushed and pulled, trying to get the angle he wouldn’t let her have. Wouldn’t push inside her. She settled for grinding her clit against the base of his thumb, the webbing, her heart pounding and her body slick with sweat, her forehead crushed to his as she worked for it.

“That’s it, there you go, almost there. Fuck yourself on my hand, Kate.”

That did it. She came in a spectacular clutching wave, stops and starts, tossed and tumbled. He clung to her, kept her close to his body, whispered dark dirty things in her ear until her heart stopped roaring and she could pick up her head.

The triumph on his face made her panic.

* * *

He watched the switch flip. Watched the light in her eyes—the brilliant, blinding spark of lust—go out, lost to the dark abyss of uncertainty. 

Beckett scampered off his lap. Light bounced off the curve of her spine, threw shadows across the too-deep spaces between her ribs as she turned away from him, arms crossing over her bare chest. One shaky hand scrabbled at coffee table and Castle heard the little huff of relief from her nose when her fingers dipped into the powder blue puddle of her sweater. 

No. 

Absolutely not again. Fuck that. 

Castle shifted, deflated cock resting pathetically in his lap, and he reached for her with both hands. Every muscle in her back tensed when he touched her, wrapped his hands around the slim band of her waist. He pressed his thumbs into the dimples at the base of her spine and watched her rise up straight like a marionette on its strings. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She didn’t look at him, just jammed her arms into the sleeves of her sweater. Castle slipped his hands around her torso and gripped the hem where it stretched taut between her elbows, kept her hung there. A jolt of pure electric satisfaction zipped through his cock when he leaned his chest into her back - skin on skin - and she whined, high and tight, from the back of her throat. 

“You’re not leaving, Beckett,” he said, twisting the sweater tight until her arms came together at the wrists. 

Not again.

“Yeah,” she bit back, “I am. This is done.” 

The fight she put up when he pushed the sweater back down her arms was half-hearted. Castle manhandled her, hands displaying a confidence his heart wasn’t quite sure of. He yanked the sweater back down her arms and tossed it away, jerked her body hard into his with one palm pressed flat against her stomach. Gripping her by the chin with two of the fingers that still _ smelled _ like her, Castle turned her face in his direction. 

“This is so _ not _ done.” 

Heat flashed in her eyes and he thrilled at the sight of it. Yes. Let her be angry. Let her rage against him. He’d take anything over that cold slick of panic, the one that made him want to do and say stupid things. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are right now?”

Castle let the hand on her chin migrate down to her throat. He stroked the thin, fragile skin under her ear, pressed his thumb into the thumping, thready pulsation of her artery. Beckett’s head hit his shoulder and she arched ever so slightly into his grasp, eyes widening with pure arousal. 

“I think that I’m the second man you’ve let tie you to a bed and fuck you,” he growled, leaning in until he could smell the scent of himself on her breath. “And I think it’s still my goddamned turn to lead.” 

Castle reached down and tugged on the zipper of her jeans. 

“Off.” 

They both leaned back, him into the couch and her into him, and she hooked her thumbs into the waist of her jeans. Started to push. 

“Underwear too.” 

Beckett went back for them, dragged the mass of denim and lace down to her ankles. She ripped off those fucking boots (really, how did she run in those things? Or those panties? Fuck.) and kicked it all to the side. The scent of her hit him like a fist and he gulped it down with an open mouth, let the heavy heat of her burn his lungs. 

Castle wrapped his arms around her, one banded under her breasts and the other a vise at her waist, and hefted. Hauled her bodily into his lap, her back against his chest. The curve of her ass pressed hard against his still recovering cock and he swallowed back the groan. She hadn’t earned that. Not yet. 

He stared down the length of her body, completely naked for him for the first time. The tips of his fingers itched with the need to skim over her. To trace the topography of her body, crest the hills and dip into the valleys. He wanted to spend hours memorizing her, what made her sigh and moan and twitch and arch. But that wasn’t what this was. Reverence—tenderness—would get him shut down, out. 

He couldn’t be out. Not when he was so close to being in.

So instead he gripped her knees and shoved, spreading her legs open wide over his own. Beckett planted her heels on the cushions of the couch, insteps pressed against his knees, and curled one arm backward around his neck. Her fingers dug into his hair and he leaned in over her shoulder, let his chin rest on her clavicle. 

“Touch yourself.” 

Her ribs stuttered. “Didn’t you just tell me that was your job?”

For once in his life, Castle didn’t feel like playing the games. If he was going to do this, going to do it the way it had to be done— 

He pinched her nipple, rolled it hard between his thumb and index finger. Kate cried out, face turning into his neck. 

“Are you following my lead or not, Kate?”

Castle watched with rapt attention as slender fingers slid across smooth skin. She circled her belly button, scrapped her nails hard across her hip. Her hand went up one thigh. Down. Again. She swept her mons, curled her fingers into the neatly manicured patch of dark curls. 

“Stop teasing yourself,” he whispered into the dewy skin of her forehead. “I want to see you make yourself come, Beckett.” 

Two fingers—middle and ring—disappeared into the slick folds and Castle felt his cock start to twitch again. Beckett ground against the heel of her own hand, fingers pumping slowly and hips rocking. She bit at the side of his neck, sucked, pulled fistfulls of his hair as her control began to slip. 

“That’s right,” Castle coaxed, hands roaming over her breasts, her stomach. “Fuck yourself. Fuck yourself the way you do when you think about that night, Kate.” 

She groaned, head rolling from side to side on his shoulder. Castle grabbed her by the hair, held her still. He took her mouth viciously, bit her tongue, sucked on her bottom lip. She chased him, wild and ravenous and teetering on the verge of desperation. 

“I know you think about it,” he whispered into her open mouth, the words echoing back to him on her moan. “How could you not? Being tied to the bed and taken, fucked until you couldn’t even breathe—”

“Castle. Oh, fuck,” she gasped, the soles of her feet pressed hard against his knees as her legs dropped further apart. “Yes.” 

She was close. So close. He wanted to watch her break. Wanted to send her over the edge with his words. Not the ones he really wanted to be using—love and forever and mine—but they would have to do. For now. 

“I think about it all the time,” he confessed, eyes on her hand even as he nipped at her mouth. “About touching you and tasting you. _ Fucking _ you. Do you have any idea how amazing you feel? Hot and tight and so goddamn _ wet. _” 

Castle let a hand slide down to cover hers, pressing hard. Bone and muscles and tendons moved against his palm and she let out a low moan that had his body straining to just shove her hand out of the way and finish her off himself. 

“I still can’t believe how damn wet you get, Beckett. For this.” He pressed the heel of his hand hard against hers, ground her clit against her pubic bone until her hips bucked. “For me.” 

“_ Castle. _ Yes. Don’t—Oh, don’t stop.” 

Never. He was never going to stop. 

“Come, Beckett. Come for me. Now.” 

Her body bowed away from his and Castle had to grab her by the hips, hold her steady. She shook and rattled and cried, clutching at him, at herself. He stroked her through it, hands skimming over her in that way he would never get away with when she was fully cognizant. 

Beckett slumped against him, muscles quivering, and he brimmed with a twisted sense of pride, knowing that he had brought her to that place. That gauzy, ephemeral place where she allowed herself those rare moments of complete vulnerability. Complete surrender. 

A shiver wracked through her and Castle shifted, turned, brought them both down to lay flat on the cushions. He tucked her between the back of the couch and his body, used himself as a wall to cocoon her from the cool air. Kate tucked her arms in against her chest and looked up at him, eyes hazy and pupils blown wide. She traced the tip of her index finger, damp and a little shaky, across his chin. 

“Maybe we should do things your way more often,” she said through a husky, cracking laugh, and the raw scratch in her voice made his cock twitch. 

He was unhinged by her, by this. Not in his right mind. He should have been more careful. Should have just let her go. Should have— 

Should have done a lot of things. 

“Kate, if we were doing things my way, this would be a whole lot different.” 

He knew immediately he should not have said that. 

* * *

Kate jerked back, pressing her hands into her eyes, feeling it like a slap.

His fingers came around her wrists, too gentle, too kind, tried to tug.

“No, don’t,” she rasped. Her voice was broken with _ coming _ . She’d come around their fingers tonight, and at his command, yet she’d meant to make a point, prove he wasn’t right. That it wasn’t all about her, that this wasn’t _ her _ doing.

But he was right.

“Kate,” he murmured.

“God, don’t do that,” she groaned.

He still tugged at her hands. “There’s no… pressure.” His fingers dug into the bones of her wrists and she grunted, shocked at the bruising. He forced her hands down. “Stop _ hiding _. We’re way past that.”

“I should never have come here tonight. I’m so sorry.” She tried to dig her elbow into the couch, a knee, something, tried to get up and move over him, but he flung an arm around her shoulder and shoved her back down. Shifted to put his body over hers.

Kate stared up at him.

“You called me that night because you needed something to drive out the darkness,” he growled. ”Don’t make it more than it is, but don’t think it’s _ nothing _.”

“I—” She swallowed roughly. She’d fucked him, fucked with him, the least she could do was get out a few fucking words. “It’s not nothing. But it’s… an unhealthy coping mechanism? Like telling jokes when it’s serious. And at this point in my life, I should have better coping skills, at the very least.”

“You think this is a coping skill?” He snorted. “I’m the one you called, Kate. The damn therapist came later.” He caught her wrist and pinned it over her head. “It’s more than a coping skill. You didn’t call Espo.”

She hesitated, trying to find words, and something dark and primal flashed on his face.

“Don’t fucking tell me Esposito is the one who’s tied you up.”

“What?!” she gasped. “No! Castle. God.”

“Tell me who it was.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” She bucked her hips to get him off her, but he was solid. He was very solid.

And he was aroused.

“Tell me who.”

“I don’t think you really want to know.”

“Unless you tell me it was Ryan, then yeah, I do want to know. Who else, Beckett.”

She ground her teeth but he ground his cock into her thigh in response. Beckett twisted her wrist in his grip but it would take doing damage to get free of him. “Fine. A guy at the Academy, Castle. We were letting off steam. _ Coping. _” And before she knew what the fuck she was doing, she said, “He was the only other one. Before you.”

The hot flare of lust in his eyes made her stomach jump. She found herself widening her thighs, opening a cradle for him. For the thick erection she could feel against her body. 

He loomed over her, came in close, pinning her with that grip on her wrist as his nose bumped hers. (What was it with keeping one arm restrained? Did he think he couldn’t take her in a fair fight?)

“Beckett,” he murmured, lips touching her lips.

Oh, he could take her _ any _ time. 

“Did he fuck you more than once?”

“N-no,” she admitted. Her heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t get the word out of her throat. But she couldn’t let that stand; she wasn’t going to be the one undone here. “Technically, you haven’t fucked me more than once either.”

“Oh, I’m about to,” he promised. She shivered head to toe and strained upward, eager, appalled at how eager but no longer able to help it. He licked her jaw back to her ear and made her writhe. “So long as you understand one thing.”

“What.”

“You call me,” he husked. His words vibrated against her skin and hummed through her body. “I’m your release, your letting off steam. Your therapy.”

“Oh God, yes,” she moaned, arching into the caress of his lips. She wanted his mouth on her breasts again. She wanted his hands widening her thighs. She wanted that flipped-inside-out feeling only _ he _ had ever given her. “Just fuck me already, Castle. Enough with the words.”

“A few more words,” he grumbled. His lips at her throat, at her pulse, teeth biting when she throbbed throbbed throbbed. “We’re doing this, Kate Beckett.”

_ Doing this? _She went reeling, objections scattering, logical reasons why not turning to smoke. She tried to grasp at them, the shame of it all, the needing to be more. “Those walls—”

“You can have your walls,” he snarled. His teeth bit her nipple and she cried out, ricocheting from pain to pleasure to pain, garbled emotions, unclear motivations. All she knew was the intense feeling of this man over her. “You can have your time, all the time you need. But I also have you.”

“H-have—” She pitched sharply into his mouth, careening wildly through lust. “_ Take _ me.” She gripped the deep muscles of his back, thrust upwards into him. “Take me, you have to just _ take me. _”

“Oh yes.” His mouth sucked the slope of her breast. “I’ll take. And take.” His fingers pressed between her legs and she cried out, the shock of intimacy too much. “Until you’re too exhausted to crawl away from me.”

“Oh God,” she gasped. His cock was right there. He was pushing inside her again, he was pushing himself inside her.

He was there.

* * *

It was better than he remembered. 

_ She _ was better than he remembered. Hotter, tighter. Wetter. Hips rising to meet his, throat working as she panted and moaned and cursed his name. Responsive and untamed and dangerous in her desire. Her need. Her nails cut into her own palm, the beds blanching from the force of it, and Castle pressed her arm down into the give of the cushion, used his grip on her wrist to leverage himself up over her body. 

Her legs climbed his waist, heels catching at the loose waist of the jeans he still had on and Beckett huffed. “Take these off.” 

Castle slammed into her harder, felt his balls contract at the way her eyes rolled back. Just as quickly, he pulled completely away. Out. Beckett cried out, came up onto her elbow as he pushed himself off the couch. She stared up at him with an unfocused yet still somehow blazing hot gaze. 

“What the fuck, Castle?” 

He laughed and she glared, the storm in her eyes turning a deep jade as the lids narrowed and her kiss-swollen lips thinned out. 

“Get up,” he said, uncaring about the ridiculous picture he must have made, standing half dressed in his living room with his cock out and ready. For her. “We are not doing this on my couch. My family sits—” 

Beckett’s hand jerked up, palm flat out. “Don’t.” 

She slid off the couch, body slipping like silk against the cushions, and he watched her, damp cock twitching in the cool air of his living room. Her fingers wrapped around the root of him and she twisted. Something that might have been pleasure, might have been pain, shot down the backs of his thighs, made his knees give. Beckett stroked him, using her own wetness as lubricant, and leaned in close, pressing up on her toes to get her mouth to his ear. 

“If you ever again want to be inside of me, you will _ never _—” a second set of fingers slid down, cupped his balls, made him squirm “—mention your family again.” 

She nipped at his earlobe and Castle groaned. Her waist was impossibly slim in his hands. Thumbs pressed under her belly button, he could almost touch the tips of his middle fingers together along her spine. The angry knot of the incision site rolled against his palm and Castle petted it softly on his way down to grip her ass. 

Body pulled in tight to his, he massaged her ass, reveled in the deep, non-stop hum of satisfaction coming from her chest. Castle spread her apart, two fingers dipping in to feel the still—_ still _—growing wetness leaking from between her legs. 

Beckett growled. “Take off your goddamn pants.” Her teeth were at his throat like a wild animal. “Don’t make me ask again.” 

Castle laughed. He knew it was the exact wrong reaction but he did it anyway, enjoying the return of this demanding, indignant Beckett from half an hour ago. The one who stormed in, brimming with vicious passion and hurt feelings, and called him an ass for not acknowledging the thing she had specifically forbade him from acknowledging. This was his Beckett. His Kate. The one he wanted. Strong and fierce and difficult and so goddamn amazing that it physically hurt. 

So he laughed at her. 

“I don’t recall you actually asking, Beckett.” 

She took a step away and he had to choke back the instinctive whimper that crept up his throat at the loss of her body pressed so tightly against his. Hands still gripping his cock, Beckett stepped back again and he had no choice but to follow her. (They both knew he would have even without her fingers wrapped around his throbbing erection.) Castle toyed with her breasts, fingers pinching and rolling her nipples, as she lead him through his own living room by his cock. 

The energy between them, that ever present current of electricity that flowed just under the surface since the day they’d met, spiked when they crossed over the threshold into his office. Beckett crashed back into him, releasing her hold on his cock to go for the waistband of his boxers. She shoved and he grunted, the elastic scraping none too gently over his cock as she pushed the boxers down his thighs, taking his jeans along for the ride. 

Castle backed her toward his bedroom, buzzing with anticipation at the notion of finally, after four years of fantasies, having this wild thing of a woman in his bed. But Beckett pushed back, somehow unmoveable even under the force of his hands. 

“I want to fuck you at your desk,” she murmured, lips whispering against his. He thrilled at the reversal of it all, the way she took ownership. Took the power. “I want to fuck you in the same place where you’ve written all those dirty scenes about me.” 

He groaned, let himself be walked backward to the chair he’d abandoned less than an hour before. Beckett pressed her palms flat to his chest, nails scraping at his nipples, and pushed. Castle fell back and the wheels of the chair rattled against the hardwood floor. 

Kate stood in front of him, pale skin glowing in the soft lamp light and hair mussed. He couldn’t stop staring. His heart, his stupid traitorous heart, beat the drum of his love for her, and he could feel it in every throbbing pulse of his cock. He wanted her. Needed her. So fucking much. 

“Beckett.” 

“Is this where you write them?”

She turned, presented him with the absolutely luscious view of her bare ass. He reached out, palmed it. Felt her weight as she pressed back into his hands, body rocking on her heels. The tips of her fingers trailed across his desk and Castle leaned in, mimicked the movement with his lips at the small of her back. 

“Yes,” he said, letting the words drag across her skin. “This is where I write about us.” 

He ignored the sharp jerk of her ribs. Like they both didn’t know—hadn’t known from the very fucking beginning—exactly what every single one of those sex scenes in his books were about. 

Nikki was Beckett. Rook was him. He knew it, she knew it; the whole damn world knew it. There was no point in denying it, in continuing to hold the words on the back of his tongue like that robbed them of their truth. Of their power. 

Castle slid his hands down to her thighs and she stepped back into him. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair and she lowered herself into his lap, the curve of her ass pressing his cock hard against his stomach. Castle moaned, bit the soft cap of her shoulder. 

“You touch yourself while you’re doing it, Castle? While you’re writing about fucking me?” 

No point lying about that either.

“Yes.” His hands roamed to her breasts. Hers touched the closed lid of his laptop, fingers arched, poised over the hidden keys. “Especially when I write the versions that are just for me.” 

Beckett leaned into him, shoulder blades pressing into his pecs. She spread her legs over his and he could feel her, the wetness of her, smear his thighs. Fucking hell, he needed to be inside of her. Now. 

“You write yourself porn, Castle?” She reached a hand between her legs, stroked his balls. “About fucking me?” 

“Of—Fuck, Beckett—Of course, I do,” he stuttered, unable to stop himself from humping against the curve of her ass as she rolled his sac around and around. “Did you—_ shit— _really expect anything else?” 

The rush of air that hit his cock when she leaned forward almost made him come. Hand still between her legs, Beckett slicked the head of his cock through the heat of her sex and then sank back, taking the full length of him in one slow, hot stroke. 

Her hips shifted and they let out harmonized moans. 

“No,” she breathed, one hand on the edge of his desk and the other gripping his knee. “I didn’t.” 

Feet planted on the floor, she rode him for broke. Castle let his hands roam, let his fingers find temporary homes along the various dips and curves of her body. She fucked him hard and fast and frantic and he felt it pulling at him, pulling his orgasm all the up from the depths of his soul. 

Castle reached up and grabbed a handful of her hair, wrapping it around his fist like a rein. He jerked and she spasmed, body quivering as she chanted out a stream of _ yes _ and _ Castle _ until she choked on it. 

Her body was almost dead weight against him as she flinched through the aftershocks; he wrapped an arm around her waist. His quads and core burned with the effort but Castle pressed himself—them—up out of the chair. When he bent her over the edge of the desk, Beckett sobbed out his name, her body clenching around his cock once more. Feet planted, he pounded into her, hand still tangled in the nest of her hair. 

“I’m gonna come, Kate,” he growled. Of course he was. It was a fucking miracle he had lasted this long after the way she had ridden him in that chair. 

“_ Yes, _” she moaned, hands smearing the polished sheen on his cherry wood desk and breasts pressed against his computer. “God, yes.” 

It hit him hard and fast and he barely had time to pull out before he was coming, thick and ropey spurts painting her ass and the small of her back. Beckett cried out again—something high and sharp that may have been his name—and her arm swung out, seeking. She caught the lip of his abandoned scotch glass and the tumbler fell to the floor. 

Shattered. 


	3. Til Death Do Us Part

** _BECKETT_ **

_What? Why? Castle, if we were getting married, would you want to know about all the guys that I've slept with?_

** _CASTLE_ **

_All?_

** _BECKETT_ **

_Seriously? You sign women's chests at book readings, you cannot be shocked that I'm not a virgin._

** _CASTLE_ **

_Eh, it's just the word..."all" suggests... a lot. How many are we talking...exactly?_

** _BECKETT_ **

_Are you really asking for my number?_

** _CASTLE_ **

_You show me yours, I'll show you mine._

_**BECKETT** (smirks)_

_Men. you all want to know, but you don't want to know. Listen, every woman has her secrets, including Jenny. And sometimes, for the sake of a relationship, it is better not to share._

* * *

A _ wedding_.

Beckett pressed her hands against the skirt of her dress to dry nervous palms. Castle kept touching her back with this light guide of his fingers, but he wasn’t looking at her. Probably smart. Probably a good idea to treat her like a skittish animal because she _ felt _ like one. If he so much as looked at her wrong—

He gestured with the hand not touching her. “Reception?”

She nodded. She was tongue-tied and flustered and her stomach had flipped when Ryan had said his vows in that warbling, half-squeaking voice. Castle had left his hand on her knee through the whole service, squeezed to emphasize the _ I do _ s. When they’d had to stand for Mass, he’d stroked his fingers off her thigh and had stood close. So _ close _ . He was just so close and she _ knew _ things about him, like the heavy weight of his cock on her tongue and the stretch of him when he first pushed inside her.

“I think everyone is walking,” he rumbled. His voice was barely articulate and yet it shot straight through her. “It’s a couple blocks. You game?”

“Yes,” she breathed. Tried to get a hold of herself. He wasn’t even touching her now. He was just _ close _. “Yes, a few blocks is fine.”

“Even in those fantastic shoes?” 

She glanced down at her feet, the pumps she’d bought for this dress, a dress she’d bought because she’d known they would be here, together, unattached, in public. Nothing could happen in public, right? “I barely feel them.”

“Better woman than me,” he chuckled.

She snorted, giving him a look from the side of her eyes. 

His ears went pink.

She hastily looked away, mortified that she’d gone there. She couldn’t go there. She’d wind up pushing him into the transept and shoving his hand between her legs. Was there a transept here? She didn’t even know, maybe this wasn’t a real cathedral. Maybe her lust was clouding her mind. She was so damn glad she’d brought the camera with her; it kept her hands occupied. 

Castle turned to the coat check, the ticket profered to the young woman behind the counter. Kate chewed on her bottom lip while he wasn’t looking, caught Lanie’s hard look her way. She scowled at her friend, waved them away. _ Don’t you dare. _

Lanie gave her a scathing eyebrow raise but didn’t approach. Castle had her coat and held it up for her; Kate slid into the sleeves and turned, let him brush his hands down the coat to ‘straighten’ the collar.

Her heart was racing. They moved as one back into the throng of the wedding party, stepped out of the church and into the bracing cold. She shivered; his arm came up as if to pull her against his side, but they both flinched, stepped sideways to avoid it. Castle didn’t look at her, withdrew his arm but offered a forearm instead, a smooth enough cover that she took it, laying her hand on top of his.

It brought them within shoulder-brushing distance. Her coat was too thick for her to feel him, and yet she still could feel him. The width of him, the tension, the awkwardness they both tried to cover up.

“It’s warmer than I expected,” he offered, glancing up at the church as they left it.

She stepped down with him, the long stairs to the sidewalk, following the crowd. “I wouldn’t exactly call this warm.” She held her coat closed in one hand, the camera in one pocket bumping her thigh. Her knees were shivering.

“Mm, I only mean, I expected freezing temperatures tonight. But it’s a balmy forty.”

She had her shoulders pressed up to her ears; she made herself relax them, take a deep breath. Her therapist had suggested deep breaths and meditation for two minutes each morning. So far she had pushed it up to three minutes, and sometimes it came back to her, the ability to check out, stabilize again. 

(His thumb hooked over her pinky, stroked.)

But damn, Castle was good at throwing her off. 

She took another deep breath, walking at a sedate pace as they followed the clusters of people down to the reception hall. It was another old, glorious building, and Kate stopped and raised her camera to take a photograph, peering through the narrow black square of the viewfinder, drawing in a slow breath. The arch and spiral of the reception hall made her think of the church, and she caught the never-dark sky behind it, a wash of twilight blue and pink from the surrounding city.

She lowered the camera and there was Castle, waiting on her, silent.

She’d never heard so very few words from him in one night. She wondered if he was as nervous as she was.

“I’d love to see your photos, when you get them developed.”

She pushed her lip out from her teeth, nodding. She had to tuck her hair behind her ear before she could answer. “I develop them myself.”

“Oh?” The airy breathlessness of that response made her heart clutch. “That’s… intriguing.”

Oh God. She saw _ ideas _ in his eyes.

She had to look away. Start forward down the sidewalk again. They’d lost most of the crowd; they were back among the stragglers. She realized she was walking too fast, that she was powering away from him, putting physical distance between them when she’d promised herself (and her therapist) she’d stop doing that.

Kate turned in the middle of the sidewalk, brought up the camera as cover. She caught Castle’s dark disappointment with the snap of the shutter, and then another one as his eyes lightened.

She’d managed not to ruin it.

When he drew even with her, she glanced at the mingling of wedding guests, a swift survey, and then she held out her hand to him.

He gave the same head check before taking her hand in return.

She squeezed. “When I develop them, I’ll have you over for the big reveal.”

He nodded, and his eyes were so intense she had to look away again.

* * *

He wanted to kiss her. 

Standing on the edge of the parquet dance floor, a too-warm glass of champagne raised in a toast to Ryan and Jenny as they took their first spin, he really just wanted to lean over and press his lips against Kate’s cheek. Right over that little beauty mark that had tantalized him since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. 

Kate swayed on the spot, the warmth of her body ebbing and flowing against his side. “Look how happy they are.” 

Castle nodded. “I think Ryan’s crying again. Esposito owes me twenty bucks.” 

She scoffed and the back of her hand connected with his chest. Castle suppressed the urge to grab it. To bring it up to his mouth, dust his lips across the backs of her knuckles. He could imagine it, the way her eyes would flash, all that intensity and passion and desire, how her cheeks would flame. His heart pounded harder at the mere idea of it and Castle had to take a long draw from the flute, let the sharp dryness of the champagne burn away the ache of want in the back of his throat. 

“You guys bet on how many times he’d cry?” Beckett huffed but there was humor in her eyes when she cut them his way. 

“Only on whether or not he’d cry at the reception,” Castle said, reaching out to take the glass of champagne she was trying to juggle while also holding her camera up for another picture. “We gave him a free pass on the ceremony. Ryan’s a softie.” 

The camera clicked and she wound the film forward with her thumb, never taking her eye from the viewfinder. Castle watched her without reservation, every cell in his body drawn in her direction. It was the same as it was every other day for the last three and a half years but also—different. This was just different. Better. 

Standing so close he could smell her, that sweet scent of her perfume and shampoo and the underlying hit of just _ her _. Kate. That smell that clung to him for hours after he’d touched her, been inside her, felt her body move and arch and grind against his. He wanted—he wished—a lot. He wished for a lot of things to be different. But still, it was good to be standing next to her in the reception hall, basking in the glow of love from their friends, holding deep within himself the secrets of her body. 

“Talk about the pot and the kettle,” Kate scoffed, clicking the camera one last time as Ryan twirled Jenny in a lopsided circle, both of their faces split wide with joy. “Like you didn’t cry at both of your weddings, Castle.”

He handed her back her glass as she lowered the camera. “Neither, actually.”

Beckett tucked the camera into the pocket of her dress, a feature he knew she was inordinately pleased with because he’d overheard her and Lanie whisper-gushing over it before the ceremony, and cast him a look he couldn’t read. One that, in all these years, he couldn’t recall ever seeing in his vast catalogue of _ Kate Beckett Looks. _

“Neither?”

Castle shrugged. “No.” It came out like a question and he watched her fiddle with the flared base of her glass. “I—With Meredith it was just—And Gina wasn’t-” 

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.” Kate took a dainty sip and he watched the long line of her throat work as she swallowed, remembered what it felt like to press his lips there, feel his name vibrate through her muscles and skin and bones as she moaned for him. “I just assumed.” 

He did have to explain. If him not crying at his previous two weddings put that look on her face, the one that he now understood as some sort of disappointment for all the things she was too scared to let herself want, he damn well did have to explain it to her. 

“I think I knew,” he said, voice low, so low that she had to lean closer to him. “I think I knew both times that I wasn’t marrying the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Somewhere inside, I knew it wasn’t built to last.” 

Kate turned her face back toward the dance floor, gave him her profile. She nodded. “That makes sense.” 

_ Third time’s the charm. _

Her words from earlier echoed inside his head and a stupid sort of bravery took over. Castle reached out, placed his palm against the middle of her back. He felt her ribs expand when she sucked in a deep breath, shoulders rolling back. He let his hand travel, sliding slowly down to that graceful slope where her back met her ass, the place where he’d dragged his lips and then spilled himself across not even two weeks ago. 

“But next time,” he said, letting his thumb rub a soft circle around the bony hill of a vertebrae, “it won’t be something I rush into. Something I think I’m supposed to do or something that’s convenient because it makes sense on paper.” He watched her from the corner of his eye, watched the muscles in her jaw flex and her gaze firmly locked on the dancing couple. “Next time it will be built to last. It will _ be _ the last. And that time, Kate? I’ll definitely cry.” 

The weight of her body against his increased ever so slightly, just a few pounds of pressure that had his chest filling up with a stupid, reckless, dazzling hope. 

“And now, ladies and gentleman, Kevin and Jenny would like to invite their guests to join them on the floor.” 

The booming voice of the DJ made Kate flinch but Castle held steady, buoyed up by bravado. His thumb continued its soft circle on her back as they were buffeted on both sides by other guests making their way onto the dance floor. Castle pressed lightly against her spine and she finally, finally, looked back at him. That aching pit of disappointment in her eyes had disappeared, been replaced by something that might just resemble the reticent hopefulness that filled his own chest to bursting. 

He didn’t ask. Didn’t have the words. Instead he simply swept his champagne glass toward the bare patch of floor in front of them. His stomach did a little twisting dive when she nodded, her own voice as silent as his. Castle plucked her glass from her hand for a second time and deposited it on a table with his own. 

In unison, they stepped over the lip of the floor and onto the parquet tiles. Castle could feel his fingers shaking when he reached for her hand, hoped like hell his palm wasn’t clammy. 

He shouldn’t be this nervous. He’d danced with women before. Hell, he’d danced with _ this _ woman before. 

But not like this. 

Nothing he had ever experienced before in his life had been like this. The feel of her, solid and warm, pressed up against him, her breath a soft, stuttering current on the side of his neck. Their hips bumped when they swayed and her fingers played with the collar of his suit jacket and it was all so painfully intimate that he didn’t need to wait for the third time. For the charm. He could have cried right there if he let himself. 

* * *

Kate Beckett stood on the threshold, wondered if she should take his hand.

They hummed, their two bodies close, warm, the scent of his cologne embedded in her senses, the heavy weight of his hand at her hip like a burn. Wavering on the edge of something, ready to fall over, if only she would curve her fingers around his and hang on.

And then he stepped out into the night, the early morning night, and down the long expanse of sidewalk to the curb where his car service had pulled up. He turned before the door, the driver waiting in the sleek black BMW with tinted windows, cool and anonymous and part of the night. Castle’s face was shadowed by the harsh street light behind him, and for some reason the unknowable rose up between them.

“Want a ride?” He held out a gallant hand and took one step forward. It bathed his face in light once more, that soft rose gold light of the city.

She nodded and came across the sidewalk to him. “Yes. I’d like that.”

“My pleasure,” he smiled, though she hadn’t said _ thank you. _

Castle opened the back door for her, clasped her hand to let her down into the seat. Her chest was alive with soft-winged moths fluttering towards the light, choking her up, making her wordless as he slid into the backseat beside her.

He kept her hand. She watched him lean forward and give the driver her apartment address. A sinking sensation in her stomach made her look away, blind eyes to the street. She had agreed to this; she knew what came next; she didn’t know why she was disappointed.

Tonight…

His fingers stroked over her knuckles on the seat between them. “It was a beautiful wedding,” he murmured. “It feels like a strong start.”

He had not cried at his own weddings. “Did it feel like a strong start before?” 

He must have understood because he sighed and glanced away. “I think I wanted it to be. I wanted it to last, so I told myself a story. I do what I always do, I wove a tale.” His face in the shadows and turned away from her made her throat close up. “I told myself the story I wanted to hear. So you might call me the unreliable narrator, Kate.”

She chewed on her lip, glanced down to where his fingers lay still over hers, unmoving. “Isn’t that the thing about marriage though? You make a promise to the unknown, to a life you can’t see and can’t comprehend how it might change.”

“And then it changes beyond your ability to cope,” he said, one shrug of a shoulder and his gaze coming back to her. An easy smile that looked real but which she doubted; she doubted it was real even as it looked as normal as every smile he’d ever given her. 

Every smile she’d gotten from him looked like this. _ Heartfelt. _

“I get the feeling you hold that against me,” he said, still smiling.

“No.” And yet she didn’t move her hand to grasp his, to keep it, and she was too late. He’d withdrawn his from hers and folded his hands in his lap, serious. “No, Castle, I don’t hold it against you.”

“Once.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But it was the persona you put on. It was that image. And it isn’t real.”

His fist under his chin, elbow propped on the door as he studied the night. Not looking at her. “Maybe it is.”

“Don’t get philosophical _ now _, Castle,” she said, trying to tease the heavy out of the air. The knot in her throat made it hard to find words. “Ruin the night.”

“No, no,” he said, eyes cutting swiftly to hers. Whatever showed on her face must have been enough because he relaxed. “Nothing is ruined.” He laid a hand on the seat beside hers, almost touching. “Nothing is ruined.” Voice quiet, going still again.

She leaned back in the seat, caught by the way the lights played over his face, the golden pinks softening his cheeks, his chin. She hadn’t stopped and looked, really looked at him, in so long that he was suddenly unfamiliar, a stranger. In her mind’s eye, he was the scruffy rogue sitting across from her at the interrogation table. But that wasn’t the man in the car with her.

He had changed; they had changed each other. In her case, she thought she was more, becoming more, but what had she done to him?

The mood clung to her even as the car pulled up in the alleyway between her building and the next. Castle’s fingers brushed hers before she moved to open the door. She glanced at him; he seemed to be waiting for something.

She didn’t know what. “It was a wonderful night,” she said, wishing she knew. Wishing it really had been the start of something.

“Let me walk you to your door.” 

“Okay,” her heart beating at the back of her throat. She hooked her fingers in the handle but Castle was scrambling fast out of the car and around the other side, trying to be the gentleman. She waited, watching him lean in and open the passenger door, raking his other hand through his hair in a nervous gesture she found endearing.

She squeezed his fingers as she stepped out.

“Don’t forget the camera,” he rumbled, nudging into her. She stumbled, caught his sleeve to keep from tilting off the curb as he reached past her. “Sorry.” His breath against her cheek, his chuckle, the hard grip of his fingers at her upper arm, bruising, were all memories of other times, other encounters, erotic and intense. “Here, I got it by the strap.”

“Thanks.” She fumbled with the camera as it swung from the strap, finally got it and pushed it into her coat pocket. Her phone was in her dress pocket, warmed by her body, and she pulled it out to slide her key from the back. 

“Hate for you to lose those photos.” His fingers trailed at her back.

“I’ll call you when I develop them,” she promised again. Her cheeks were hot as they came to her lobby door. She released the security lock and he opened the door for her; there was a pause as she hovered at the threshold, neither going forward.

She glanced back down the alley to the car idling in a tow-away zone. 

“I guess I shouldn’t let him stay there,” Castle hedged.

She shifted, fingers around her key, her eyes on the lobby of her building. “Yeah.”

“Good night then,” he murmured, so close she startled, and her lips brushed his where he’d been aiming for her cheek.

She nudged into it, wanting, but he mumbled an apology and leaned away, his ears reddening. She swayed; he took a step back. “Good night?” she said, her voice in a crack.

Castle looked toward the alley, finally back to her. Grave. “Call me.”

“I will.” She touched the camera in her pocket. They could… make a day of it. Photos and memories of this night; it might be their thing, their place to start. Maybe they would look back on this night as _ the _ night, even if she hadn’t been ready, even if she was still struggling.

He held the door until she was inside the lobby, and then he watched her through the glass as she turned for the elevators. When his gaze was cut off from her, she let out a long breath and leaned against the wall, her heart thundering.

* * *

He stayed up until five in the morning. Waiting. 

Hoping. 

The phone never rang.


	4. Dial M for Murder

** _CASTLE_ **

_Hmm. I believe the conspiracy. I mean, I know Weldon._

** _BECKETT_ **

_And Weldon knows you. Conspiracies, intrigue? That's your bread and butter. That's exactly the kind of story that you would respond to._

** _CASTLE_ **

_I'm sorry, are--are you suggesting he's playing me?_

** _BECKETT_ **

_I am suggesting that you consider the possibility. I have a procedure to follow. He didn't provide his coat willingly, so I'm gonna have to get a court order._

** _CASTLE_ **

_Whoa. Look, once word gets out that the NYPD subpoenaed his clothing in connection with embezzlement and murder, that man's career will be over. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_Not if he's innocent._

** _CASTLE_ **

_Are you kidding me? Kate, this is politics. Perception is reality. The truth won't matter._

** _BECKETT_ **

_What am I supposed to do, Rick? I can't just stop being a cop just because it's inconvenient._

* * *

Richard Castle sat in the dark, nursing a scotch and soda as he stared out the windows of his office and into the night.

He was left with a sick, uneasy feeling in his guts after that clandestine meeting with Mr Smith in a parking garage. A conspiracy. 

He felt unsafe, and worse, it felt like Beckett wasn’t safe either.

Castle pressed his thumb to his sternum, remembering the sight of that bullet scar between her breasts. 

He closed his eyes, trying to block out the memory.

When his phone rang, he was grateful for the interruption. No good taking a trip down memory lane when the end of it was uncertainty and disappointment. She hadn’t called that night after the wedding, even though he’d said—

Oh, she was calling him now. “Beckett?”

“Castle,” she answered. “Wasn’t sure how we left things. And then I couldn’t find you later.”

He leaned his head back against the leather, closed his eyes as the warmth of her washed over him. She wasn’t even here, and yet he had the sense memory of her body in his office, of her body rising over him and settling in. 

He ought to yank his thoughts out of the gutter, and fast. “No,” he offered, “I wasn’t running out on you. I invited the mayor over for a drink.”

She sucked in a breath. “He’s not a fan of mine, is he?”

“We didn’t talk about you,” he said honestly. She’d said to him on this case, _ don’t make this about you, Castle. _ And she’d been right to say it; he’d insisted on his friend’s innocence because in part he was afraid that Weldon’s removal from office would mean his removal from her squad. He was uncertain where he stood, in more ways than one. “He’s committed to being mayor, but he won’t be running for governor. Or President.”

She was silent; he hadn’t meant to condemn. Or insinuate.

But he wasn’t sure what they were anymore. Since their awkward not-a-date date at Ryan and Jenny’s wedding, they hadn’t spoken about… well, damn. The same things they’d never spoken about before. Which was why the uncertainty lived in his guts and made him uneasy about every choice he made.

“I’m still not looking for an apology,” he told her, his voice rumbling through the alcohol. “Are you looking for one from me?”

“That’s not why I called.”

He set the tumbler down and sighed. “So why did you call?”

There was a strange hesitance when she finally answered. “Checking in on you. Assuage a guilty conscience.”

It hit its mark, though he knew she had no idea he’d gone to meet Mr. Smith about reining her in, keeping her away from the one case—

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I know things got tense.”

“We talked,” he said. “We smoothed it over—I thought we did anyway.” A heartbeat. “Wait, are you worried?”

She let out a breath that the phone picked up inordinately loudly. “Okay, yes. I’ve been worrying. I thought I’d see you after I put the case away. I guess I’m used to the two of us wrapping it up, getting some closure to things by talking it out with you.”

She wanted to talk. She’d wanted to _ talk. _“So this is a therapy session?” he chuckled. “I’ll charge you 4.99 a minute, Beckett.”

“Cheaper than my therapist,” she shot back. “Wait. No. That’s nearly $300 dollars an hour.” She whistled. “Phone sex is an _ expensive _ therapy.”

“Phone sex?” he questioned mildly. But his heart thumped in his chest, his fingers tightened on his phone.

He was staring at his desk chair._ I want to fuck you in the same place where you’ve written all those dirty scenes about me. _

“You did say,” she murmured. Her voice expanded and slowed like rich honey off the end of a spoon. “Did you not? That some use phone sex as a form of therapy.”

“I did,” he rumbled. He couldn’t resist pressing the heel of his hand to his groin, nostrils flaring for a deeper breath. “I did say that. And I happened to be right, in this case.”

“Right?” she questioned, though her voice dipped in a way that had his hips bucking. “I don’t know about that, Rick. You being right. You might need to convince me.”

Oh God, was she really saying what he thought she was saying?

* * *

What the fuck was she doing? 

Kate ran a hand through her hair, scraped her nails hard against the back of her head. The phone felt hot against her cheek but she wasn’t sure how much of it was the hum of electronics and how much was the hum of his voice so smooth and soft in her ear. If she closed her eyes, if she let herself, she could feel his lips there, the words he had whispered to her as he’d fucked her a faint echo, like the ghostly waves from a seashell. 

This wasn’t why she’d called him. It wasn’t. She had called because she had needed to know that he was okay. That _ they _ were okay. Needed to check in with him to make sure that she hadn’t ruined—wrecked—yet another piece of this complicated puzzle that somehow was supposed to maybe fit together into a _ them _. Someday. 

But hearing his breath hitch at the words _ phone sex _—

Yeah. This _ was _ why she’d called him. Some part of her, the part that she had suddenly lost the ability to ignore, to control, wanted this. Needed it. Him. The connection they had established through their fucked up “therapy” sessions. Kate knew her actual therapist wouldn’t approve, would tell her this was doing more damage than either of them could possibly imagine, but how could something that felt so fucking amazing be dangerous? 

(She knew exactly how. She didn’t care. She couldn’t stop. Not now.) 

“I do have a reputation for being very persuasive,” Castle said, his voice dropping down into that low baritone he used when he wanted his words to _ matter _, and she shivered. 

Kate hummed and pulled her knees up to her chest, letting herself sink deeper into the corner of her couch. She curled her bare toes into the fabric, watched the moonlight bounce off the pale pink of her toenail polish. The soft cotton of her well-worn NYPD sweatshirt swathed her torso in comforting warmth and she let his voice do the same, let it run down her throat and over her breasts, pooling low in her stomach. 

“Have you ever called a phone sex line, Castle?” She startled herself a little with the bluntness of her question, the way the words just fell out of her mouth. He did that to her. Made her do and say and feel things she never would have imagined. It was terrifying. 

And addictive as hell. 

“I have,” he admitted and a little spike of something hot and mean sliced through her chest. “A handful of times after my first divorce.” 

“Why didn’t you just go out? A date, pick up a woman at a bar?” She worked to keep her voice low and neutral, that same interrogative tone she used in witness interviews. Soft and probing, no accusations. “You’re an attractive man, Castle. You’ve never had any problem finding a date.” 

Castle hummed and she felt her abs clench. “It wasn’t about that. It wasn’t just about sex or a date. It was—” He paused and she heard the clatter of metal on wood. His breathing changed and she listened to the ambient noise of him moving around his home. The soft snick of a door closing brought his voice back on the line. “The calls were about a connection, however temporary. I could spin a story with the woman on the other end of the line—” 

“I know how you love to do that,” Kate said, fingers circling the knob of her bent knee. The pads of her fingers bumped over and over the lightly ribbed fabric of her yoga pants until the skin started to tingle. 

“Exactly,” he said. “I could make my world into whatever I wanted for the length of a phone call. Sometimes it was just me, a single parent looking for a release from the stress of everyday life. Sometimes it was more elaborate.”

“Like role playing?”

“Essentially. I’d put on a role or a character, spin a tale about who I was and what I did. Like I said, it was about creating the world I wanted, just for one night.” 

Electricity buzzed under her skin. They hadn’t even really started yet and she already felt like she was standing on the third rail. 

Fuck. 

“Castle?”

“Yeah?” The gravel in his voice, like the word had been mined up from the depths of him, made her nipples ache. 

“Create that world you want—tonight—for me.”

She could almost feel the heat of his exhale on her neck. Kate’s hand slid off her knee and tripped down the length of her thigh. She pressed three fingers—God, three of hers were barely equal to two of his—against herself through the crotch of her pants and rocked a little, felt the already obscene amount of wetness soaking her panties. 

“Where are you?” he gruffed, the words a little broken, the way he sounded when she had him on the edge of coming but he was trying to hold back, to make it last. 

“My couch.” 

“No,” Castle sighed and she heard the soft fwump of linens. “You’re in my bed. With me.” 

Oh, God.

She wasn’t going to survive this. 

* * *

“I’m in bed with you,” he heard over the line.

_ My bed, _ he thought, but this was already pushing things so much he didn’t insist. “Are you naked, Kate?”

A stuttering breath. “N-no. Undress me.”

“I love when you come to me as Beckett and I unwrap Kate.” At her flutter of movement on the line, he had to crush the heel of his hand into his groin, relieve the pressure. He for damn sure wasn’t coming at the mere_ thought _ of phone sex. No.

“Unwrap Kate?” she murmured. A hum that had his nostrils flaring and his hips rising into his hand.

He was _ not _ touching himself yet. No. “Run my finger along the slope of your clavicle—”

“Only a writer says clavicle.” But she sounded rough, her voice that textured alto that scraped him raw.

“You gonna critique my word choice?”

“Would I be me if I didn’t?”

“Point taken,” he murmured. “Don’t ever not be you when you’re with me.”

“Convoluted. Don’t lose the plot, Castle.” Another faint breath. “And don’t stop.”

“Collarbone,” he mused, could almost feel the warmth of her skin under his finger. “A drag of two fingers now, along your shoulder to your nape.” He closed his eyes. “I love the softness of your skin there, and the fine strands of hair.”

She cleared her throat. “Am I passive in your world?”

“For this you are, waiting to see what I’ll do. But I don’t think you can stand it for long. Maybe you have a competition with yourself, to see if you _ can _ take it, because you know I like to edge you.”

“Do you now?”

He grunted and crushed his fist into his rising erection, breathing sharply through his teeth. “Yeah.” Another second and he got it under control again. “You like it.”

Something in the silence made his heart race. He thought maybe he heard the shift on a couch or against a headboard, the telltale movement of a body bracing itself for that first touch.

“Don’t touch yourself until I tell you that you can,” he said roughly. “You don’t get to come without permission.”

The little gasp made his cock throb. “Why?”

“We’re simply setting the scene now, Kate.”

“Y-yeah. Okay.”

“That soft place at your neck,” he resumed, rubbing two fingers against his thumb to feel it. “The little hairs. Touching your throat and leaning in to place a kiss there. Wet, because I can’t help wanting to taste you. Lotion or perfume tonight, Kate? That faint tang of perfume or the sweet slip of lotion?”

“At my throat?” she husked. “For you? Perfume. Like the night of the wedding, if you had kissed me there…”

“I am now,” he promised, resting his hand at his stomach, just above the button on his pants. Teasing himself. “A touch of my tongue to your throat and down to the hollow. Too hollow, Kate, scares me sometimes, how well you ignore your own needs.”

Her sharp startle. “Then give me what I need.”

“Touch yourself,” he growled. Pushed his own hand below the waistband of his pants and adjusted his thickening cock. “While I tell you the story, our story. Slip your fingers into your panties, Kate, and feel how wet you are.”

“You’re—” A panting breath. “Bit behind, Castle. Already there.”

“Oh fuck,” he moaned, hastily opening his pants, yanking down the zipper. A jolt of pain at the roughness, and it cleared his head for a moment. He pressed the back of his skull to the headboard, breathing fast. “Are you as wet as I imagine?”

“More.”

“More than I imagine, you must be soaking those poor panties. Take them off.”

Rustling on her end made his skin tighten, his cock ache. She was taking her panties off, not just in his world, but in the real one. He’d done that to her, he’d gotten her into his scene.

“Use three fingers,” he told her, finally touching his cock. He had to close his eyes again, force air through his lungs. “Use three fingers, a little awkward with it, not smooth, not the way you’d normally get yourself off. When I’m there touching you, I’d pet you for a while, marveling at how wet you are, how slick.”

“Oh God,” she murmured. He could _ see _ the way she might arch her neck. “Don’t stop. I’m so close. Are you close? I want to touch you, let me touch you too.”

“Then touch me,” he demanded. 

They never talked; would she talk now?

* * *

His words. 

His fucking words. 

Rick Castle had been seducing her with words since long before he knew her name, pulling her in with tales of gruesome murders and globetrotting spies and so much righteous justice. She had shelves filled with his words. Three entire books filled with words he’d written _ about her _. And now it was her turn. 

Her tongue felt thick and sticky against the roof of her mouth. 

“I—” 

“Just tell me, Kate,” he cajoled. She heard that hard edge of his arousal wrapped in a soft blanket of emotion—and she didn’t want to think about it. “Tell me what you want to do with me. To me.” 

Beckett rolled her head across the back of the couch, licked at her dry lips with an even drier tongue. Her hips rocked against her hand, the one she’d shoved down her pants the moment he’d told her not to, and she groaned, eyelids fluttering at the memory of the last time he’d commanded her not to touch herself. 

“I want to taste you,” she finally breathed, the hem of her sweatshirt brushing against her abs as they trembled. “I want to take you in my mouth and watch the way your eyes roll back when I press my tongue against your shaft.” 

Castle grunted out a low _ fuck _ and her heart stuttered. His breath came in heavy exhales and she could picture the flare of his nostrils and the thin line of his mouth as he tried to hold himself back. Tried to control himself. To keep a tight leash on his desire. 

No. 

Not tonight. 

“Being on my knees for you,” Kate started, and she heard him choke back something, some aborted crush of consonants and vowels, “was amazing. Having you at my complete mercy, your cock in my mouth and your balls in my hand. It was a fucking power trip, Castle.” 

“You had to touch yourself you got off on it so much.” 

Kate hummed, a brazenness bubbling up from the dark tar pit of her arousal. It soaked her fingers, made her bold. 

“I always have to touch myself when I think about sucking your cock, Castle. Have for years.” 

He hissed. “Jesus, Beckett.” 

“I’ve touched myself a lot thinking about you, actually.” 

Kate leaned into the give of the couch, wished it was firmer. Warmer. She untangled her feet from the mess of her leggings and underwear and brought her knees up, planted her heels on the cushions. Exposed herself to him, even though he couldn’t see. Her fingers slid out, slipping so easily through the wetness just his voice could create, and she circled her clit, teased herself. The muscles in her thighs, finally starting to regain their tone, trembled. 

“I loved watching you get yourself off,” Castle grunted. 

“I liked being watched.” 

“Yeah? You want me to watch you fuck yourself, Kate?”

She hummed, wished like hell she had a hand free to reach up under her shirt and squeeze her breasts. Roll the hard peaks of her nipples between her fingers until she felt it pull tight in her clit. 

“I think we should watch each other.” 

Oh. She really did want that. Wanted to spread herself out on her bed, legs wide and hand pumping, while he stood over her and watched, worked his cock. Devoured her with his gaze. A wave of wetness leaked from her cunt at the image and Kate whimpered, pressed hard against her clit. 

“I don’t think I could watch you touch yourself and not fuck you,” Castle growled and she could hear it, that slick slap of his hand working over his cock. “I couldn’t do it, Kate.” 

“Then fuck me,” she husked, hips bucking. “Fuck me, Castle.” 

“I—God—I am.” Castle panted over the line and she listened to him, sex clutching around nothing as she abused her clit and humped the air. “You’re so wet. For me.” 

“Yes. I am. So wet.” 

“You feel so fucking good, Kate.” 

“Come for me,” she whined. Begged. “Please, Castle. I want to hear you to come.” 

The pure animal snarl in his voice when he spit out her name made her jolt, her body unraveling at the seams. Castle growled, low and harsh and raw, and it hit something deep inside of her, some dark part of her soul that she wasn’t even sure she knew existed before that moment. 

Heavy panting filled her ear. 

“Castle?” 

A pause. Just long enough to make her heart stumble. 

“I’m here,” he rasped, that gravel back in his throat. “I’m here.” 

“You okay?”

His laugh was like a helium balloon inside her chest. “Never better, Beckett. How about you?”

Her bottom lip caught behind her incisor out of habit, a tease he’d never see. 

“Well, um, I’d really like to come now.”

A vacuum of air pulled at the speaker still pressed hard to her ear. The side of her face felt hot and sweaty where the phone was pressed against it and her fingers were starting to cramp from holding on so long. The screen lit up when she moved the phone away from her face and she hit the button to turn it on speaker then put it down on the cushion next to her. 

His voice filled the entire living room. 

“You didn’t come, Kate?”

“No.” 

She pulled off her sweatshirt and sports bra, threw them on the ground with the rest of her clothes. Sat naked on her couch, swathed only in the night air. It moved against her skin, vibrated with the waves of his voice spilling out of the speakerphone. 

“Why not?”

Kate circled a finger around her clit and gasped, body pulled taut with anticipation. 

“You told me I couldn’t,” she whispered, eyelids fluttering. “Not until you gave me permission.” 

* * *

Fuck. His entire fucking life. 

He hadn’t given her _ permission. _

“Good girl.”

She whined something nasty and he grinned, his eyes closed, head back against the padded headboard, still breathing hard. She sounded desperate.

He loved desperate. “For a woman who does whatever the hell she wants, I’m impressed you followed directions.” He still held his cock in one hand, the pleasure a low-grade current in his blood. “Thought you’d buck the system and go on without me.”

“Castle,” she muttered. “Supposed to be a story you’re writing here.”

“Mm, okay, I got you.” He shifted, took in a deeper breath. “Where are those fingers?”

“Right where you put them,” she said shortly.

Not enough fantasy then; his climax had dropped them out of the scene he’d written around them. “Slow down, Kate. Slip them out.”

She growled.

“I haven’t said you can come,” he warned sharply. He _ felt _ her pause, the arrested motion of her fingers between her legs. “Back off. Lay your hand against your inside thigh; it’s cramped and aching. Breathe.”

She must have obeyed his directive because he could hear her breathing even out. His own cock was a strange buzzing ache, faintly aroused by the way he could talk to her. 

“Pet your thigh,” he murmured. “Just as I might, your wet fingers smearing against that soft inside skin.”

“Castle,” she breathed.

“Prop the phone so you can have both hands free.”

“You’re—already on speaker,” she husked.

“Ah, clever. Touch your neck, a soft barely-there touch, just the tips of your fingers.”

“I wish I could touch you.”

He shivered. “The soft stroke of a few fingers at your neck, imagine it’s the head of my cock you’re petting.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.”

“Draw those fingers down your chest, in light circles, along the irregular edges of your scar. Like I would, press two fingers there like a kiss.”

“A kiss,” she moaned. 

He had her now. “A kiss, reverence, as I lower my mouth down your gorgeous body.”

Her breath caught.

“Now your breasts, skimming, avoiding the places you want _ most _ to touch, but not yet. You can’t yet.”

“Please,” she whimpered. “Please.”

“Not yet. The areola, you can touch that, circle that pebbled skin, make it draw tight, puckered. Sometimes I dream about putting my lips there and feeling the bump of your nipple at the corner of my mouth, seeking.”

“Oh God.”

“The tip of your finger, Kate, touch your tongue to the tip of your finger and then touch your nipple.” He wondered which breast she’d gone for, left or right, the one that liked a rough twist or the one that needed the abrasion of constant rubbing. “Is it wet? Are you wet?”

“I’m so wet,” she moaned. “Please let me come, let me touch my clit. I need to come.”

“Not yet, not yet,” he warned, warmth in his voice to let her know _ soon _. “Make a little circle at the tip of your nipple, rub it around and around.”

“Y-yes,” she gasped.

“Now drop your other hand. Push those fingers between your legs and shove them inside you.”

“Oh God.” He could hear her on the phone, the jerk of her hips, imagine the way her eyes would fly open.

“Like I do, when I finger you, harshly, shoving you over the edge.”

“Please,” she gasped.

“Crush your clit with the heel of your hand as you pump your fingers inside you, hard, _ hard _.”

“Harder,” she moaned.

“Harder,” he growled. “And come for me. Come for me, Kate. So hard, contracting around your fingers and wishing it was my cock.”

She cried out, a staticky echo on the phone, like the digital line couldn’t contain the feeling that exploded in her voice.

* * *

She needed more. 

She needed—

“Castle?”

Her legs quivered. 

“Yeah?”

“Come over.” Her body clutched around the fingers she still had curled inside herself and her lungs caught, stuttered. “I wanna see how long you can watch before you lose control and have to fuck me.”

He growled and Kate’s toes curled.

“Be there in twenty. Don't bother with clothes.” 


	5. An Embarrassment of Bitches

** _BECKETT_ **

_And I bet you let him sit on your couch, didn’t you?_

** _CASTLE_ **

_Um..._

** _BECKETT_ **

_No, it’s okay. You can be the fun one. I’ll just be the bad guy, because there is no way that you are shedding all over my couch._

** _CASTLE_ **

_Oh, no. He’s perfectly happy right there. Oh, and he loves it when you rub him right between the eyes. Just little circles with your thumb, just like this… Not too hard, just..._

** _BECKETT_ **

_Castle..._

* * *

He was coming.

Kate sat in the middle of the couch, her knee pulled up to her chest, chin propped on top, and her eyes locked on her front door. Her fingers fluttered at the place where her leggings met her ankle, all her anxiety trapped below her wrists. It was a trick Dr. Burke had taught her. Focusing all her worries and fear and panic into one small, manageable part of her body and just breathing while she worked it out. Let it go. It was dumb and it didn’t really work all that much but she was trying. 

Her whole life was just about trying now. (And therapy.) Talking to Burke and implementing the suggestions and plans from their sessions. 

But he was coming. He would be here at any moment.

Kate hadn’t been lying when she’d told Castle she had been thinking of getting a dog. She had. Because of Burke. He thought it’d be a good idea for her to have the stability and security a pet could provide. A warm body to come home to that didn’t expect anything from her but the basics—food, shelter, and love. Nothing complicated. No emotional turmoil. No walls. Just pure light and love. 

The test run with Royal, even as short as it had been, had made her think that Burke might be right. That maybe she could handle taking care of something other than herself. Maybe. So she’d gotten the number for that rescue from Ryan and had called to schedule a home visit. And then Kate had called Castle and asked him if he could bring over some of the stuff he’d gotten for their co-parented dog. 

(She’d ignored his little sharp inhale when she’d said _ our co-parented dog _ on the phone. Too much. It was just too much.) 

Of course he’d said he’d bring it right over even though she had told him it wasn’t necessary, he could just bring the stuff to the precinct. Some part of her—that selfish, craven part that had started this whole fucked up thing that night in her bathroom—had known he would. It was why she had called him. Not texted. Not just waited until the next day and asked in person. Both would have worked. Would have netted the same end result. But no. Kate had picked up the phone at ten pm and called. 

Because she wanted him. 

It was becoming a crutch, this _ physical _ therapy thing between them. She knew that. But fuck if she wanted to stop. Fuck if she was going to stop. Not now. Not when she knew how _ good _ it was between them. How his hands and his mouth and his cock could make her forget it all. When he was touching her, she could put it all down and just be. 

Normal. Real. 

Like hell she was giving that up. 

A soft knock on the door had her shooting up off the couch, heart like a hummingbird at the base of her throat. Kate skimmed her hands over her hips, smoothing out the hem of her sweater. Her hair was still pulled back in the curly bun she’d been experimenting with (he’d liked it, she could tell by the way his fingers curled on the edge of her desk while he’d shot her looks he mistakenly thought were covert) and she flitted her fingers over it, tucked a stray curl back into place.

She was primping. No. Not supposed to— 

Fuck it. 

Kate jerked open the door and Castle jumped back a little, shoulders pulling up to his ears. 

“Hey?” 

She forced herself to breathe, to make her own shoulders relax. Fine. It was fine to care about how she looked. 

(She refused to think about the ten minutes she’d spent online earlier ordering a bottle of Fracas all because he off-handedly _ mentioned _ it.) 

“Hey, sorry.” Kate stepped to the side, swung an arm. “Come on in.” 

Castle strode past, hands full. “Okay, so I brought you the bowls—food and water—plus all the toys and both leashes.” He dropped the haul on the island in her kitchen and turned, the tail of his jacket fanning out. “I think you should probably get a dog bed too if they’re coming for a home inspection. You know, to show that you’ll have a dedicated place for him or her.” 

Kate laughed. “It’s a dog, Castle. Not a baby. It’ll be fine.” She walked past him, pulled open the fabric grocery bag of dog accoutrements. “God, how many toys did you buy for a dog you had for less than one day?” 

“I let him pick,” Castle said, fingers skimming over the back of her hand as he reached into the bag for one of the plush toys. “We went to the pet store and I got—” 

“Everything he showed the slightest interest in?”

She could feel the warm wall of his chest against her side and her toes flexed, the tips pressing hard against the floor. Kate swayed a little, hips bumping into the island and heat coiling low in her abdomen. She turned, angled herself toward him, tried not to shiver when he smiled down at her. 

“Not everything. I didn’t get the two rescue kittens he fell in love with.” 

“But you thought about it.” 

He gave her a one-shouldered shrug. She could see his five o’clock shadow coming in and her fingers curled with the urge to touch it. To grip him by the ears and drag his face over all her naked body. Breasts. Stomach. The insides of her thighs. 

“Only for a second. I’m allergic. Learned that one the hard way when I got Alexis a kitten for her ninth birthday.” 

“Is that where you learned that ‘slow circles between the eyes’ trick? Because that was genius.” 

Castle’s smile softened into something that made her stomach flip. 

“Yeah? It worked for you?” 

Kate reached for his wrist, took the plush dog toy he was holding and dropped it on the counter. She turned his hand over, holding it in both of hers. Her thumbs traced slow circles on his palm and Castle shifted on his feet, hips tilting. 

“It really did,” she said, voice barely more than a whisper as she stared at him through her lashes. “So well. And I’ve been wondering—” Kate stepped in closer, thumbs never ceasing, and cradled his hand against her stomach. “— what it would feel like to have your thumb making those same soft circles around my clit while you fuck me.” 

* * *

Castle would be lying if he said her words didn’t get to him, but he’d learned he needed to keep the upper hand with Kate Beckett; it didn’t pay to be whipped. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t _ need _ to make circles on your clit while I fuck you, Kate. You need no help coming whatsoever.”

“Indulge me anyway,” she hummed, bumping her pelvis to his. The heat that built between their bodies was erotic, not to mention the way she still circled her thumb in the cup of his palm. She tilted into him, her eyes on his lips. “A few slow… slippery… circles.”

He kissed her. Yanked her by that teasing hand into his chest and kept her there, his tongue sliding against her tongue. A little grunt of satisfaction that he felt against his mouth, felt in his own bones, and then there was no more teasing. She had a hand down his pants and the other flirting under his shirt, rubbing bare skin until he felt raw. (He couldn’t fathom how she attacked sometimes, the shock and awe strategy she employed against him, like she wanted to decimate his reserves, fuck him up even as she fucked him.)

He tore the sweater off over her head—or he tried, it got stuck, too long, the damn hem caught under her arms; she wasn’t about to let go of his belt buckle—and then he flung it to the floor with a malice he didn’t understand. Attacked her leggings next, and fuck it had to be illegal just how fast he could get into her pants. How the hell was it possible to already be slicking two fingers through her arousal?

“Oh.” She went up on her toes, wide-eyed, like she hadn’t asked for this. “Oh God, yes.”

He yanked the leggings down, dropping to his knees despite the warning in his head (_ you won’t be able to get back up again _), and he cupped her hips and brought her sex against his face.

“F-fuck,” she gasped.

He inhaled desperately, clutching her against him. She shuddered, both hands gripping him by the ears, and he went in for her panties with his teeth. 

“Castle!”

He nipped skin, the sweet vulnerable inside thigh, so pale, so thrumming with the jackrabbit of her pulse that it felt like he was taking between his teeth her own clit, throbbing with need. And it was only her thigh.

She growled a whimper, a combination of urgency and _ oh God don’t stop _, and Castle plucked the elastic of her panties with his teeth, nudged his nose in under the material. His chin rasped her thigh and she crumpled, straight down like a controlled demolition.

Castle caught her by the backs of her thighs, kept her standing but only just, and she swayed over his head, slid down to the floor. Kissing the top of his head, his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks, his ears, his mouth. “Bed,” she demanded. Her fingers bright and quick to his belt again, where he batted them away. She twisted his ear and had him jerking. “Castle. Your knees.”

He circled her wrists with a hand, fingers tightening at the reminder. (How did she know his knees suffered—)

“Off your fucking knees and _ in bed _,” she growled. “Get your clothes off.”

He staggered against the kitchen counter as he tried to rise, pitching inelegantly toward her groin. (_ Get up, you idiot; she wants you to fuck her, not smell her) _.

He grabbed the edge of the metal counter and hauled himself to his feet, wishing like hell he wasn’t this old for her, but when she shoved him towards the bedroom with that predatory slant in her eyes, the years fell away.

His mind spun with possibilities, weaving storylines out of thin air, his cock already painful in his pants. Age meant wisdom, and creativity, and thank God, some stamina.

When he stopped at the foot of her bed and turned around, Kate was stripping off the camisole and baring her breasts to him. He was thunderstruck by her ease, and then the camisole drifted to her feet, and she was stepping out of her panties.

Castle whipped the belt off, devouring her with his eyes, mapping the contours he wanted to explore with his hands. Every time they did this, this reckless mindless fucking, he went home wishing he’d done more, said more, exposed something in him or in her that would reassure them both.

But he never had. He never had managed to find what it might be. He daydreamed in the precinct about a moment just like this, where he might worship with his words as well as his hands, but when it came, the mercenary slant of her approach and the reserve brimming in her eyes made him lose the ability to insist.

So long as she stalked toward him, so long as she never stopped pushing him to the bed with the flat of her hand and climbing on top of him, he didn’t need to say a thing.

Kate planted her hands on his chest and rocked her hips against his groin. He grabbed her wrists and yanked, pulled her down to him where he could claim her mouth again. She moaned into the kiss, writhing over him, and in seconds he felt the wet slide of her sex against his bare stomach.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Kate.” He released a wrist to grab for her thigh, arrowing in to the wet folds she was crushing against his abs. “You’re so _ wet _. Just from a few seconds on my knees?”

“From all week, from you making those circles on my hand like you had no idea what you do to me, but you _ knew _.”

He hadn’t thought, he _ hadn’t _ thought of it until it was already done, too late, and the electricity arcing between them. “I wanted to hook my fingers in your pants and tug you against me,” he confessed. She was rubbing herself against him now, sloppy kisses at his neck, a hum in her throat. She was going to orgasm before he even managed to really touch her. “I wanted to grab the curly knot of your hair—God, I love the wild look on you—and push you to your knees to suck me off.”

“Castle,” she groaned. Her breasts high against his chest, her hands planted in the mattress as she rubbed herself against him.

“You’re not coming like this,” he growled, gripping her thighs and tugging on her. “I won’t let it be said that Kate Beckett was forced to hump one out against my chest.”

“I’m good with that,” she said breathlessly, tried to connect with his mouth, her lips dancing at his jaw. She moaned and rubbed her cheek to his, shuddered hard, her tongue laving his ear. “Fuck, I needed this.”

Why that made him furious, he couldn’t explain. But a fire had been lit with her careless needy words, and he pushed her up by a shoulder, shoving her seeking mouth away from his. 

“Castle—?”

He yanked her by the hips, his mouth blazing a trail from her knee up her inside thigh to her cunt. Putting her right against him.

She cried out. His tongue raked across her swollen folds, her delicious dripping _ cunt _, and he nipped his teeth as he spread her open with his fingers.

Before he could peruse her at his leisure, she was gripping his head with her knees and rocking against his face. 

Castle choked, Kate moaned, and the hard thrust of her hips against his tongue had him losing his mind.

* * *

Four hard swipes of his tongue against her clit and she was coming, one hand fisted in his hair and her thighs quivering. Castle groaned and it vibrated up through her pelvis like a tuning fork, struck something lodged deep inside her ribs. His hands gripped her thighs while she quaked, his fingers ten hard points of pressure holding her steady. Holding her together. 

When her eyelids finally peeled back and she struggled to focus, the first thing she saw was him. His eyes, so bright even in her dimly lit bedroom, stared up at her from between her own knees, full of lust and longing and so many other things she didn’t have the words to name. It shot through her, that look, made her want to rock her body against his, long and slow and soft. 

Kate’s eyes slammed shut again and she sucked in a stuttering breath. 

This was too much. 

Her quads flexed, toes pressing into the bed for leverage. She slid her hand from the top of Castle’s head to the bed, rocked forward to lift herself off him. 

“No.” 

Her ass was slammed down to his sternum, bone on bone contact that sent a shockwave up her spine. Kate made herself look at him and everything inside her chest turned liquid at the raw wildness in his eyes, the way his lips glistened with _ her _. 

“I’m not done,” he growled, neck craning. He nosed her pubic hair, dragged the hard point of his chin across her thigh. His tongue darted out for a hot, sharp swipe at her clit and Kate felt her nipples harden. “Just because you lost control and came after thirty seconds, doesn’t mean I am finished with you. Sit on my fucking face, Beckett.”

“I don’t—”

A hand connected with her ass, hard and stinging. Castle pushed her back up onto her knees. Onto his mouth. Kate whined low in her throat and bowed over him, her sweaty palms slipping against the bed spread. Castle slapped her across the ass again and she collapsed down to his face, desperation building. 

Two fingers spread her open over his mouth and he groaned. It echoed between them, vibrated up _ into _ her. Made those aching places between her ribs loosen, the knots start to unravel. He came at her with his tongue, flat and wide, a bolt of electricity straight through her. Kate sat up on her knees, spine straight and head thrown back. 

“Fuck, Castle,” she huffed, fingers combing through his hair, fisting and releasing like a kneading cat. “_ Fuck _. Don’t -” Her hips rocked without instruction, seeking more. “Don’t stop.” 

He grunted at her, eyes sparking in way that made a fresh wave of arousal leak from her. (He was never going to stop. He would keep doing this—_ them _—for as long as she let him.) 

They caught a rhythm, her hips and his mouth. Kate felt it building, that slow burn low in her gut turning into a roiling boil with every swipe and—_ oh fuck _—jab of his tongue. He was telling her a story, directly on her cunt, and just like every other story he’d ever told her, she was enthralled. 

Castle’s hands massaged her ass. Squeezing, rubbing, spreading. He slid over her hips, scraped his nails through her pubic hair. Ran the tips of his fingers up her stomach. Dipped into her belly button, spanned her ribs. One hand closed around her breast, clutching her in that way he’d somehow known from the very first time that she loved, near violence. 

And then his other hand planted low on her abs, thumb stretching down to pull the hood back on her clit. He dragged one of those oh so soft circles around her, around again, soft slow circles. Kate gasped, bucked against his jaw. Another fiery circle and she cried out something that might have turned into his name if she had any control over it. 

The bastard laughed. 

His amusement hummed against her clit, almost sent her over the edge, and she couldn’t have that. Kate yanked on his hair and swung off to the side. Every muscle in her body twitched like she’d been tased as she stumbled off the bed, jelly for legs. Castle hoisted himself onto bent elbows and she felt his eyes on her. 

“Beckett?”

Kate stumbled a little on her way to the door, pointed back at him with one only slightly shaky finger. “Stay.” 

She ran through the apartment on her toes, breasts swaying. The bag of dog stuff sat on the counter still and she pulled it to her, looked inside. One of the leashes was loosely coiled in the bottom of the dry water dish. Kate reached inside the bag, a shock of anticipation zipping up her arm when her fingers closed around the cold metal clasp. She gathered it up in one swift movement and spun around, headed back for the bedroom. For Castle. 

He had stayed where she’d left him. Amazingly. Her heart did an aching lurch at the sight of him there—shirtless and ruffled, his pants wide open and eyes burning a hole right through her. 

Because she was holding the leash.

“Do I get a treat for being a good boy?” Castle pressed up from his elbows to his fists and she saw the flush had spread across his chest, his eyes fixed on the leash. “Or am I being punished for being a bad boy?”

Kate planted a knee on the bed and swung herself into his lap once more. His cock, still behind two layers of clothes, pressed against her, insistent. She shuddered a little, worked to keep her eyelids from fluttering. He already knew way too much about what she liked. What he did to her. She didn’t need to give him more reasons for that smug tilt to his mouth. 

“Not a treat,” she said reaching for one of his wrists and sliding the open loop of the leash around it. “Or a punishment.” 

She reached for his other wrist, rode the wave of his hips as his shoulders crashed to the bed. Kate looped the leather strap of the leash around his wrists in a figure eight, bound his arms together. She slipped the clip end of the leash into one of the loops and pulled it through, then dragged herself slowly over him, letting her nipples skim his skin, to reach the headboard. The leash snapped around the metal bedstead with a satisfying snick and she felt him give a full body tremor. 

“This is more like... training,” Kate hummed, sitting back on her haunches. She looked at him laid out for her, arms loosely bound over his head and skin flushed, then leaned in, danced her lips over his, licked herself off his chin. “You’ve never known how to keep your hands to yourself so I thought I’d teach you.” 

“You like it when I touch things.” He chased her mouth and she let him catch her, let him flick his tongue past her lips in simulation of what he’d been doing between her legs not five minutes before. “You like it when I touch _ you _.” 

God, yes, she did. 

So much that it scared her. How much she wanted it now. Needed it. Him. The way he could break her apart with nothing more than his words or his thumb or his mouth on her neck. The power she felt when she brought him to his knees with a flick of her wrist or a roll of her hips. How they fucked like they had been doing it for years, like they were made to do it. 

Kate shifted, climbing up his body and planting herself back over his face. Her knees made dents in the bedspread and Castle’s head listed to one side. She grabbed his skull with both hands, centered him directly between her thighs. His eyes went supernova as her hands ran up and over her own body. 

“You like when_ I _touch me,” she said, squeezing her breasts together and rocking her hips. She could feel his breath washing hot over that aching, needful place between her legs and she let her thighs release a little, let the swollen lips of her cunt brush across his open mouth. “You like to watch me. Don’t you remember the other night, Castle?” 

He grunted, arms pulling against the leash. “When you fucked yourself for me on your couch? How could I ever forget that? Watching you ride your own hand while staring at my cock is the stuff of fantasies, Kate.” 

“You couldn’t take it for long though, could you?” Beckett reached up and pulled the elastic band out of her hair, let her curls fall free. “You just had to touch me yourself. _ Fuck _ me yourself.” 

“You didn’t complain when I had your knees over my shoulders, my cock buried between your legs. In fact, I seem to recall you begging for more.” He lifted his head and nosed at her clit, blew a hot stream across her. “_ Harder. _” 

Kate shook out her hair then reached down for his. She took two fistfuls, one on either side of his head, and pressed, pushing his head down into the bed. Her hair fell in a curtain around her face when she looked down at him, when she rocked her hips. 

“You’ve never been great at patience. Or directions. Or keeping your hands to yourself.” Kate used her grip on his hair to direct his head, his mouth, holding him exactly where she wanted him. “I’m hoping a little intensive one-on-one training might help reinforce some more positive behaviors.” 

Castle smirked up at her. “I’m yours to command, Beck—” 

She dropped her weight, let her wet, aching cunt connect with his mouth. Castle groaned and tried to arch into her but she held him in place with her grip on his head. Core and thighs working in tandem, she rode his face, teased them both with her transience. She used her grip on his hair like reins, guiding his head from side to side, tilting his chin up and down. Keeping everything perfect, keeping herself right on the edge. 

Castle groaned from between her legs and she let herself look at him, let their eyes lock while she got herself off on his mouth. The heat, the depth, the things she wasn't ready for—all there in the worshipful and awed way he stared back at her. 

She bucked and cried out, completely unable to break their stare as she came. 

“_ Castle _.”

* * *

Castle stared up at her. She still had his face clasped in her hands, his skull between her palms as if divining his secrets, as if mind meld was a thing that happened during ecstasy like theirs.

No. No, that didn’t happen.

With his arms lashed to the headboard, his biceps twitched and jumped. Made her insides twitch and jump in echo. 

But it was everything from the blade of his nose to the deep burn of his eyes that had her trembling. A quiver down her spine. She released him to fall forward, flat on her hands to the mattress, dragging in great gulps of air as she tried to breathe again. 

He looked equally suffocated.

When she shifted back, his chin scraped her swollen places and she shuddered.

“You are… gorgeous,” he rasped. He sounded like sex. His arms strained against the leash even as he turned his head, licked the corner of his mouth for her taste.

She came down on her elbows and caught his tongue, explored her arousal over his mouth. His grunts of pleasure, of give and take, had her draping her body against his and letting their sweat mingle, her sex paint him.

Her hair was damp against her neck, heavy, and his jaw was textured, catching the curls. Her fingers curved into his hair again, the so-soft strands, as she lightly sucked the come from his face.

“See?” he rumbled, a sound that was shared rather than heard. “I can be taught new tricks.”

“Somehow I doubt that’s new for you,” she murmured against his mouth. Licked the crooked grin he couldn’t seem to help. Kissed him for sharing, kissed him for pretending, kissed him for thinking she’d be snowed by that.

“Tied by my own dog’s leash _ is _ new,” he chuckled. His body was a brand against her skin, making it impossible for her to move off him. Impossible to turn away, immolated. “Feared I might climax in my pants watching you come, _ tasting _ you come.”

She dug in with her elbows to push on down his body, feigning ignorance as he rambled, taking her time with the flex of muscle, the softer resistance of flesh. She had the roundness of his pectoral in her teeth before he even hitched, a shiver he couldn’t hide, and then she got serious.

Scoured a trail down his belly for the open cavern of his pants, reached between them to play at the elastic waistband of his boxers. Skin here was as soft and silky as his hair; she had loved the way his hair felt between her fingers as she rode his mouth.

“Ah, Kate,” he gasped, his pretty words gone again.

She slid a knee off him and perched at his side, twined her leg around his so he would be reminded of how wet she was, how his mouth had made her so wet, tease him with the possibility that she might rub another one out against his thigh before she ever _ ever _ touched him the way he wanted.

“Kate,” he grunted. “Really need inside you. Unless you want this over before it begins.”

“I’ve already started,” she husked, touching the half-undone zipper of his pants, fiddling with it. “I’ve hit the finish line. Twice. On your mouth, Castle.”

“Fuck me,” he whimpered.

“I’m still debating.”

His eyes flashed at that, a quicksilver in the darkness that she couldn’t miss. She’d been watching for it, actually, waiting to see when that indignation rose up, when he might demand things, even bound to her headboard.

She liked when he got demanding.

Beckett shifted to her knees once more, grinding wickedly against his thigh before she rose up. She tugged the zipper all the way down and began working on his pants, scooting back to get them off. He helped, that awkward and desperate lurch of his body that always made her intentions falter as they floundered in that space of time that had gotten too real, the logistics that had to be worked out.

But the moment his boxers dropped over the side of her bed and she came face to face with his cock—that defiance of need, the immediacy of lust—everything settled.

It was so easy to throw a leg over his thigh and straddle him, a hand closing around his erection as he bucked beneath her. It was the most right thing in her world to stroke and pet and soothe the beast of him with the promise inherent in her fingers, her palm, the little kisses she bent over to give him.

“Kate,” he hissed. Near-ecstasy on display for her: the rise of his hips in the ocean swell of want, his arms pulling against the leash, neck thick and straining, the grind of his teeth. “I’m not fucking kidding. You want it? Then you need to get moving.”

She came up on her knees, the vivid impression of his head between her legs. She took his cock the same way, two hands, palming the thickness of him, guiding him between her legs.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he chanted, as if she didn’t know the way.

As if she didn’t feel it too. His cock penetrating her. “How thick you are,” she choked, head falling back as she came up and down again, working to get him fully inside her. “God.”

“You feel so damn good around me.”

“So good,” she breathed, dropping her chin. She planted her hands to his chest and lifted up again, just enough, redirected his angle—

He jerked, a shudder going through him as he seated. So full she felt him in the back of her throat. “Castle,” she called faintly, searching for his eyes again, finding his gaze hot and intent on her. She tilted forward to feel his cock against her front wall, whimpered. “I find myself thinking about this. In the middle of the day.”

“Fuck, I do too. Sitting at your desk, thinking about being inside you.”

“Getting coffee,” she husked, lifting slowly, dragging it out, the withdrawal. “Stirring the spoon, thinking about your fingers pressing inside me.”

“When you pull the cap off the white board marker. Like you tug on my cock with your fist.”

She groaned, sinking down hard on him. He struggled against the leash, but she had it all set up, it was exactly like she wanted it. “Not just at the precinct,” she breathed, swiveling a nasty grind against his pelvis. 

They both whimpered.

“Where else, where else,” he choked out.

She leaned forward and lifted her hips, agony, sweet delicious agony. “Every time I look at my couch, every time I drive by your street, when you cross an ankle over your knee and display your crotch,” she sank down hard and groaned, bowing forward, breathing fast, almost there, almost there, “I think about this right here, your cock inside me, how you feel_ . _ How you make me _ feel— _”

The snap of metal jerked her head up, but he was already reaching for her, trailing the leash as he fisted her hair. His body rose up and he crushed his mouth to hers, taking a brutal kiss, thrusting his tongue as he did his hips. She cried out against his teeth, stars bursting behind her eyes as he fucked her from below, her orgasm keen and fiery and out of her control.

That he came soon after didn’t matter. It was already over.

* * *

Kate sat in the wide leather chair with her knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. Her shoes—ballet flats today because she just couldn't face the heels—sat neatly next to one another on the rug. The urge to move, to explode up out of the chair and run, burned through her. Closing her eyes, Kate took a deep breath and counted slowly to ten, tried to visualize it all being trapped in her left hand.

She was on her fifth count of ten when the door opened. Her eyes flew open and she tried not to startle, not to look like a trapped animal. She wasn't trapped. She was here of her own volition. She had called. Made an earlier appointment. 

This was her doing. 

“Kate,” Dr. Burke said in that low, soporific voice. She wondered if that was part of his treatment plan, to lower his patients’ defenses with his soothing tone. “It's good to see you.”

She nodded but didn't return the pleasantry. They both knew she still didn't really _ want _ to have to be here. 

“I know we had an appointment scheduled for next week but Stephanie said you called this morning to move it up. Did something happen that made you feel like you needed to come in earlier?” 

Something. 

Yeah.

A whole series of somethings. Bad decisions made out of need and want rather than logic and rational thought. Decisions that had led to last night, to her leashing her—the man she—_ Castle _to her bed and giving him far more of herself than she’d meant to. Than she was ready for. 

_ Every time I look at my couch, every time I drive by your street, when you cross an ankle over your knee and display your crotch, I think about this right here, your cock inside me, how you feel, how you make me feel— _

Kate dropped her knees, let her feet hit the floor. She rolled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. Looked Dr. Burke in the eye. 

“I've been sleeping with Castle. For a little over a month now,” she confessed, left hand trembling on her thigh. “And it has to stop. I need you to help me stop.”


	6. The Blue Butterfly

** _BECKETT_ **

_Do you think we should've told Joe and Vera about the Blue Butterfly?_

** _CASTLE_ **

_Oh, no. Why ruin it for them? No, that's the stuff that dreams are made of._

* * *

Rick Castle studied the line of her throat in the soft light of the bull pen’s ritualistic transitioning of the watch. The precinct had emptied and not yet refilled; most of the nine-to-five detectives, aides, and clerks had gathered their things and gone home. 

He waited, hands clasped between his knees, studying her as she finished the paperwork for the case. He had volunteered to pack it away, stalling for time, and now the box rested under his chair at his heels. She had not yet looked up, her hair pulled back in a knot at her nape, a tightly controlled bun.

They had not had sex in weeks. No suggestive phone calls, though she teased as warmly and knowingly as ever. No sudden panty-soaked arrivals on his doorstep, even as he caught sight of that hunger in her eyes when they left for the day. No leather binding his wrists, no spanking, no demands, and yet she shot him these scalding looks over the murder board that said she remembered.

She remembered.

She had simply… slipped through his fingers.

Beckett lifted her head from the paperwork, her lips softening into a smile. “You should go on home, Castle. I’ll be here a while yet.” A distance in her tone even as she smiled.

He wanted to say _ let me back inside you _; he wanted to lean in and press his thumb to her groin and find her clit, remind her of things.

She lifted a hand, clasped it over his forearm with a squeeze. “Check in with Alexis, have dinner with your mother. Don’t let me hold you back.”

And because he saw and heard the double meaning in her voice, because there was a kind of plea in her eyes _ don’t let me hold you back _, he acquiesced, collecting his coat and phone and placing the closed-case box in his seat.

But he was making plans as he left, the romance of the blue butterfly still infecting him. It wasn’t just the sex he wanted, it wasn’t only the feel of her around him, but it was everything. He was here for the boring parts too, he was here for the holding back.

When he got to the loft, she’d been right: his mother wanted dinner with the three of them and had already started the pasta, his daughter was doing homework on the counter like she used to when she was fifteen and still a fledgling.

He’d been thinking about getting a dog because the loft was too quiet now that she kept flying the nest. But this thing with Kate had filled his hands, filled his nights, so that nothing was quite as empty, even if he was coming home alone. 

She still hadn’t come to _ his _ bed, come _ in _ his bed; she hadn’t really stepped foot over that last threshold, and he knew it.

But he had a pleasant, amusing evening with his mother and Alexis, washed up the dishes at the sink by hand. Rinsing the suds from a plate, he realized he expected Kate to be right there, taking the dish from him and drying with that same muted tenderness in her smile. She’d have her hair loose, at ease in his home, her feet would be bare because she didn’t like wearing shoes in the house. She would dry while he washed, putting away each thing without needing direction from him because one night when she hadn’t been able to sleep, she had hunted through his cabinets and noted the placement of everything, mental notes, for recreating later, at time such as this.

He would flick water from his fingers at her and she’d duck, her smile broadening; he’d do it again and she would squeak, try to escape. She’d come back around and get him for that, spank him lightly with that knowing arch of an eyebrow, and he’d leave the last of the dishes in the sink and follow her across the living room, through the office, close the door on his bedroom.

She would strip him first, _ trying to get me wet Castle, _ her tongue touching his neck, his chest, his stomach. She would put a hand in his pants and begin fisting him, talk to him about being wet, humming insinuations about being barefoot in his kitchen, _ what are you trying to do to me, Rick _.

“Darling?”

Castle jolted roughly from fantasies, his hands buried in hot water, his mother calling to him as she came down the stairs. “Mother. Doing the dishes.”

“Why on earth when there is a perfectly good appliance for such things?” She gave a wriggle of her jewel-encrusted fingers and made a motion he didn’t understand. “Don’t forget the sauce pan on the stove, dear.”

He glanced over his shoulder and sure enough, the cheese sauce was cold and clumped in a pan on the stovetop. He tried not to sigh.

His mother left in a self-narrated commentary about her own business, and then the loft was quiet. He knew Alexis was upstairs on her phone searching for ‘meaningful charity work’ in her gap semester, but he didn’t want to be here.

He wanted to be there.

With Kate, the version from his fantasies, the version from the precinct, whatever version she’d let him see. He didn’t know why she’d stepped back from their sexual relationship, but he knew she was going through things.

She didn’t have to go through them alone.

He dried his hands on the dish towel and ignored the last of the dishes. When he grabbed his coat and his keys and stepped out his own front door, he had never before felt so exhilarated. 

He was going to show her what she was missing. 

* * *

When he arrived, he found that she didn’t want to let him in. 

It was glaringly obvious in the way she looked at him, held her body. Her face. The hard line of her mouth, the tiny furrow between her brows as she averted her eyes, that vein along her temple that pulsed with anxiety. Nothing had ever been more crystal clear to him. 

Kate Beckett did not want to let him in.

It broke his heart and pissed him off in equal measure. After everything they had been through, that she still couldn’t find it within herself to admit that they were something _ more _, that whatever it was between them was bigger than either of them could truly fathom, that he was good for her and she was good for him. They made each other better. More. And she refused to see it. 

Tonight, he would make her see.

“Castle, what are you doing here?” 

She half-hid from him behind the door, only one side of her body visible. It reminded him of all the times since her shooting when he’d seen her making herself as small a target as possible His anger dropped out at the recognition that she was scared. Of him. 

“Can I come in?” 

Her eyes darted to his lips and he watched as she swayed a little, her ankles suddenly made of rubber. Oh. She wasn’t scared of him. 

She was scared to be _ alone with _ him. 

It hit him then. They had hardly been alone together more than a handful of times—either in a room or a car or an elevator—since the last night they had fucked. The night she had leashed him to her bed and ridden his face until he’d thought they both might pass out. The night she’d rained down on him words so perversely beautiful that he actually had them memorized. 

_Every time I look at my couch, every time I drive by your street, when you cross an ankle over your knee and expose your crotch, I think about this right here, your cock inside me, how you feel— _

Kate didn’t want to to be alone with him. 

How he hadn’t seen it before, Castle didn’t know. Maybe he’d just been so caught up in thinking about her body and all the ways he wanted to touch it that he somehow failed to recognize the fact that she had gone out of her way over the past month to be alone with him as little as possible. Sending him out in the field with Ryan or Espo, not picking him up for crime scenes, cutting out to the morgue on her own while he was preoccupied with his phone or in the bathroom. She refused every lunch, dinner, and drink invite and hadn’t even wanted to get a coffee with him in the damn break room. 

It hurt. He couldn’t lie about that. It hurt that she was so twisted up she couldn’t just _ talk _ to him. That’s all he really wanted. Her words. To know what she wanted and needed so that he could be allowed to give it to her. Even if, for now, it was just his cock. He just wanted her to trust him enough to let him care. 

“I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Castle.” She shifted from one foot to the other, fingers fiddling with the door knob. “It’s late and I’m tired and I was about to head to bed.” 

“It won’t take long,” he lied. It would take all fucking night if he had his way. All night of worshiping at her body with his hands and his mouth, showing her, reminding her, how good they were together. “I promise.” 

That lip—that gorgeous lip—tucked behind her teeth. He watched her wrestle with it, watched what she wanted (him) and what she thought she needed to do (send him away) wage war behind her eyes. Castle decided to help sway the battle in his direction and reached for her hand, ran the tip of his index finger down the outside edge of her palm, from wrist to pinky. 

“Let me in, Kate.” 

The door swung in. She stepped back on legs that shook slightly, a hesitating fawn in the middle of her own entryway. Castle strode past her, stopped in the living room. Took two deep breaths and tried to get himself under control. Calm and collected was the only way this would work. 

“What do you want, Castle?”

_You, God damn it. _

He turned. Kate stood by the door, arms wrapped around her waist and one foot propped on the other. She stared at him, face half in shadows, and hair tumbling down over one shoulder, and he had the altogether irrational urge to take her picture. To pull out his phone and capture this moment, this quintessential Beckett. 

“I was thinking about Joe and Vera,” he said, not moving. Not yet. “About how they never went back for the necklace because they didn’t need it. Not to be happy.” He wanted to reach out for her. To brush his thumb along the hard edge of her jaw, drag the tips of his fingers over the line of her hips. Just to touch some part of her, to know he was getting through. “All their dreams, their wildest fantasies, were fulfilled just by being together. It’s really beautiful, what they have.” 

“Yeah.” Her voice sounded like cracking glass, fragile and thin. “It is.” 

“And it made me wonder,” he continued, taking a single step toward her. “What that kind of happiness looked like for me. What my dreams are. My fantasies. Do you want to hear what I came up with, Kate?”

She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. But her eyes widened and her chest hitched and so he took another step. 

“I want someone to wash the dishes with.” Castle blew air out through his nose, shook his head. “Ridiculous, I know. But it’s the truth. I’ve always wanted that kind of… ease, I guess is the right word. That kind of comfortable relationship where we can do simple things like wash the dishes together and it still somehow matters. Where it’s time well spent simply because it’s spent together.” 

Castle took another step. He could reach out his hand and touch her now if he wanted to. He did want to, desperately, but he wouldn’t, not yet. She wasn’t there. But she was close. He could tell by the way she was looking at him, her gaze darting back and forth between his eyes, his mouth, his hands, never lighting on any one piece of him for longer than a breath or two. A pink blush suffused her cheeks and her hands had balled into fists. 

He was getting to her. 

Castle took a breath, pressed on. “There’s intimacy in domesticity, I think. An intimacy I’ve never had but always craved. I want someone to be at home with.”

“That sounds nice,” she breathed, head tilting back on her neck to look at him as he stepped into her personal space. 

“Doesn’t it? But that’s not all I want.” He gave a quick jerk of his head. “I want physical intimacy too. Mouths and hands and naked bodies. Touching each other in ways that only we can, that only we understand.” 

He watched her ribs hitch as her lungs gave a little stutter. Castle moved in, brought his body within inches of hers, felt the warmth radiating out of her skin like the sun. He cupped the side of her neck and her pulse fluttered erratically against his palm when his thumb brushed against that impossibly soft strip of skin behind her ear. 

Kate’s eyelids fluttered. Everything in his guts twisted and something like satisfaction burned in his chest at the sight. But he wasn’t satisfied. Not even close. He never would be, not when it came to her. 

“It’s rare, Kate. That kind of connection. The kind where two people just _ know _ each other so completely, where they connect on every possible level and it makes everything—” Castle leaned in, pressed his lips against her ear “— _ everything _—so much more intense. That’s my fantasy, Kate, my dream.” 

When she looked up at him through her eyelashes, her pupils were blown wide, irises nothing more than jade rings around onyx. Kate’s arms uncrossed and she gripped him by the shirt, hands fisting at his hips. Castle dragged the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip and swayed forward, let his hips bump into hers. 

Her breasts rose and fell on a heaving breath and he leaned in, let his lips brush against hers as he spoke. 

“Tell me yours.” 

* * *

When it seemed clear to him she couldn’t speak, he prompted her again. “What are your dreams, Kate?”

Her heart throbbed in her throat; his gaze was fixed on that little bird-like pulse, proof she wanted. 

And her eyes. 

He spoke and she seemed hypnotized by the movement of his mouth. Her body swayed when he approached; when his nose nuzzled against her cheek, she shuddered. 

“Tell me your fantasy.” He wanted more than bare brushes of skin, but he held off, waiting. “These past few weeks, not touching, not having, what came to you at night?”

She gripped his waist as if to keep from falling. “I…”

“Yes?” A soft caress of his mouth at her ear; she vibrated. “What do you want, Kate?”

“I want… to be good enough for it.”

He flinched, a hand cradling the back of her head. “Good enough?” He _ loved _ her. How much more clear could he make it? How the hell could he prove something that didn’t need to be proved?

She took in a breath. “I meant. More than this.” That particular roughness to her voice always made his guts feel liquid. She held his shirt in her fists as if to prevent him from getting closer. “That wall.”

“I have great respect for that wall,” he rasped, his mouth trailing against her jaw. To her neck. His teeth while she gulped for breath. “But you want to slip outside the wall for a rendezvous, it can be arranged.”

“Cas-castle,” she gasped.

His hands closed around her hips, slowly overbalanced her into his body. Her head turned from him but those fists in his shirt now seemed to pull him closer, her body eager even if her mind seemed reluctant.

“The stuff of dreams, Kate.” His lips dragged agonizingly over hers, chaste, so chaste he felt the twist in his chest. 

He was still waiting. He hadn’t bulldozed her with his own need, not yet; he was holding back, just the press of bodies, the press of lips. Nothing more if she couldn’t, if she truly didn’t want this.

“What do you want, Kate?”

“I want to stop having one foot out the door,” she mewled. “I want to be _ in _ it.”

He growled at her lips. “Then this is what you want.” He crushed his mouth to hers and pressed her against his body, the unmistakable thickness of his erection. 

She clawed at his back, and it ignited a desperation in him he’d only touched the surface of before. _ Drought _ . But that was too unkind for what this was, this terrible need to _ have her _. 

It wasn’t really about the sex. 

Castle tore away from her mouth, eyes racing over her face. “This is what you want.” Insistent. “This is what you dream of when you’re alone, lonely.” He wanted to grab her but instead he held off, made himself hold off, offering it up to her, free will. “Let me take you to bed, Kate.”

She launched herself at him.

Castle gave way to the madness, fueling their ferocity with his mouth, feeling her rage in her teeth and tongue. She seemed, if not certain, then at least aggressive. If not fully worthy, then at least hungry.

He’d take it.

Castle shoved her towards her bedroom, but she tripped at the back of the couch, their kiss never breaking. They were caught, hung up at the furniture, and he didn’t want to waste time, didn’t want to give her time to think better of it.

This _ was _ better. 

Damn it, this was the best thing for them.

Castle tried to pick her up off her feet; she listed to one side; he didn’t have the balance right. He had to be bruising her ribs with the effort of keeping her, kissing her druggedly because he couldn’t stop. She tipped precariously against the back of the couch, hooked her legs at his, heels digging into his calves as he bore her back. He couldn’t get enough of her, didn’t want to come up for air. 

She sat up straight, body jostling his, and she yanked the sweater over her head. 

Her breasts filled the nude bra with all that supple flesh, while her chest heaved for each breath, hypnotic. 

Castle caressed her through the satin with a reverence he couldn’t contain. The ephemeral nature of her body, how fucking precious, as his thumbs joined at her scar, caressing just under her warm soft breasts. 

But no, if he stopped here, he’d never come back, so he traveled down to the waistband of her pants.

He was careful of the buttons, the three of them, and delicate with the zipper. Her stomach fluttered and flinched as he bent forward, his head bowed, supplicant seeking the altar.

He couldn’t stop caressing. Couldn’t help the need to worship, the pleading in every touch. _ Don’t stop _, even though he was the one undressing her.

Beckett took his head in her hands, tugged him up to look at her. Those intense flashbacks of her body over him as she rode his face, the taste of her, the suffocation by thick desire, now supplanted by a kind of grief in her gaze. And yet, she pulled him up by his ears and crashed into his mouth. 

Their kiss ravenous, but fragile, and he knew he was too desperate. The dominance was gone, disappeared, subsumed in distress.

He couldn’t lose her.

“Let me,” he croaked, _ let me love you _. “Kate.” More demanding now, growling at her, twisting out of the grip of her legs. “These pants are coming off, everything is coming off.” He felt dangerous, teetering this close to hopelessness, and the power flared bright and hot inside him like the urge to cry. Burning at the back of his eyes. “Get these pants off, Beckett.”

She lifted her hips into his maneuvering, a fervor in her eyes that looked ominous (maybe he was only assisting in her reckless self-sabotage, maybe each time they fucked it was as if she held her wrist out to the knife). 

“Kiss me,” she begged, overbalancing on the back of the couch to reach for him.

His fingers snagged her throat to catch her. 

She froze, mouth parted. So pretty, so deadly beautiful with his fingers around her throat. “Kiss me,” she rasped.

No. Not yet. The lust was a twisting snake as he eased her upright. He couldn’t resist pressing his thumb against the throb of her swallow, and she cried out, arching. 

“Stay,” he reminded her, that thrashing beginning in his guts. Urges. Need. She writhed on the back of the couch as he pulled her pants off, like she hadn’t heard his command at all. Like she had no more control of her body. “Damn it, Beckett, _ stay _ where I put you.”

Her knees splayed at graceless angles at the back of the couch, her thighs already spread to make room for his body. Her legs kept wrapping around him to hold on, even as her hips bucked, seeking resistance.

He flung off the pants and rose to his feet. 

She clutched at him. “Castle.” Her hand drifted down between them, knuckles brushing his groin. Her lashes fluttered and he realized she was touching herself under her panties.

“Are you wet?” he growled, fingers easing on her throat.

“Soaked,” she gasped.

“Is this your fantasy?” Castle dragged his hand down her sternum, fondled the still-taut scar, petting between her breasts. She swayed, hunching forward; she was going to fall off the couch. “Sit up. Don’t make me hurt you.”

She shuddered, her eyes fixed on his. 

Castle palmed her ribs, his thumbs pushing under the material of her bra, a silent demand for her to keep herself perched on the back of the couch. For her to play her part in this, not just acquiesce. _ Be with me. _

She squirmed, rubbing her thighs against his jeans, rocking her hips into him. He peeled the cups of her bra up from her breasts, ignoring the front clasp, bent forward to lick at each nipple.

She writhed, a high animal noise from her throat.

He lifted his head, studied her, waited for her eyes to open, for her to be present again. When she stared at him, connected, he yanked her bra up and over her head. 

Her arms jerked, rising with the band, tangled in the straps, caught. He hooked the bra behind her back, effectively pinning her arms to her sides.

She stared at him, mouth dropping open.

“Ever fantasize about being tied up and fucked over the back of your couch?”

She didn’t even blink. “I am now.”

He grinned, wolfish, sliding his hands into her panties to grip her ass, firm, demanding. A warning of what was about to come. When he lifted her from the couch, her legs didn’t seem to want to work, weak and wobbling. “No. Don’t hang onto me. Stand up and turn around, Beckett.”

She tripped over her own feet; he gave her no space to move, kept himself pressed against her even as he demanded she get into position. Castle shoved her between her shoulder blades, tipping her off balance so that she fell forward, her ass in the air, her arms pinned to her sides.

He gathered her hips in his hands, caressing, gentle, easy. Stroked her flanks. “I have this particularly vivid dream,” he began, talking like she wasn’t bent forward over the back of her couch. “_Vivid. _ I always smell you first, like I smell you now. You fucking want me.”

She writhed, her arms twisting against the bra, but he yanked on her hips to bring her ass against his erection. She moaned, an obscene noise in the midst of her animal panting, and he hooked a finger in the crotch of her panties and pulled.

He could hear the squelch of her wetness as the cotton came away soaked from her sex. Wet and hot, the heat of her pouring out between her legs, a force. He hummed, something pleasurable and sinful unfurling in the knotted space of his fear. 

She was in this. She was his. 

Castle began taking her panties down her legs.

Her juices creamed her skin, wet, all the way down.

* * *

She had never been this wet for him before. 

Castle couldn’t help dipping his tongue into her, the petals of her sex blooming wide between her spread legs. She tasted better than he remembered, dark and bitter butalso tangy with a hint of sweetness. He let himself play for a moment, reminding them both of the last time she’d had him in her bed. Between her spread knees. 

Her moans were muffled from the other side of the couch and he somehow grew impossibly harder at the image of her biting the cushion to dampen the volume of her desire. He nosed at her ass and she shivered against him, one leg bending at the knee. He pushed her down by the ankle and pressed his thumb into her Achilles until her leg buckled. 

When he bit the back of her thigh, her hips bucked like a fucking bronco, the legs of the couch scraping across the wooden floor. Castle steadied her with a hand on her waist, levered himself off the ground with the weight of her body. 

“You’re so wet, Kate.” Her bare skin burned through his clothes when he draped himself over her back, imprinted the image of her body onto his. “I think this is the wettest you’ve ever been for me.” 

His fingers ran up her sides, skipping over the speedbumps of her ribs. The perfect teardrops of her breasts filled his palms and Kate wrapped her ankle around his and pulled, tried to drag his body closer when he was already pressed so tightly against her. Her hands windmilled futilely at her waist and her hips rocked under his, short little jerks that had him clenching his abs to stop himself from blindly humping into her. 

No, that wouldn’t do. 

Not tonight. Tonight he had a plan for her, to show her exactly who they were together, what they could be. No part of his plan included coming in his pants from dry humping her ass. 

“Do you want me to touch you? Is that why you’re so wet, Kate? Because you can’t stop thinking about my cock—” his hand between their bodies, thumb and finger on his zipper. Kate whined like a trapped animal when he ran the head of his cock over her. “—inside of you? Fucking you?” 

“Castle, please,” she keened, forehead braced on the couch cushion. “Please, plea—Oh, fuck, _ yes. _” 

He slicked into her in one long, smooth stroke. She accepted him easily, her body betraying the secrets of her heart. Castle steadied her with a hand along her hip as she writhed under him, feet scrambling for purchase on the floor. 

Castle straightened up and gripped her with both hands. His hips pistoned and she cried out, back bowing and arms straining against her fabric bonds. His eyes devoured her, the long, milky white line of her spine, the way her waist sloped ever so slightly into her hips, the delicate arc of her wrists when she reached back for him, those long pianist's fingers luring him in like bait. 

“Cross your legs,” Castle growled, shifting his legs to straddle hers. Kate didn’t react, didn’t comply, didn’t do anything but whine his name in a high jet engine pitch and roll her body against his. Her head shot up with a howl when he slapped her hard across the ass, one for each cheek. “Cross your fucking legs, Beckett.” 

Her cunt instantly contracted around his cock when she moved one foot behind the other, crossing her legs at the ankles. Their moans spilled out in harmony. 

He hauled her up into his chest with an arm strung between her breasts. Her elbows stabbed him in the chest, kept him from pulling her flush against him. He held her as close he could, teeth at her shoulder and the head of his cock scraping her front wall with every sharp thrust. 

“This is part of my dream too,” Castle mouthed against her skin, the hand not holding her upright sliding down her stomach. He brushed her clit with the pad of his middle finger and she stopped breathing, chest hung mid-inhale. “It’s the best part. Getting to make you come. Watching you and listening to you. Touching you.” 

“Make me—God, please.” Her head knocked into his, her muscles quivered. “Make me come.” 

“I am,” he promised, hot spikes of lust stabbing through his groin when he pinched her clit and she went ragdoll in his arms. “I want nothing else in the world right now than to fuck you until you come.” He dragged his nose through her hair, found the shell of her ear. “You’re so beautiful when you come, Kate. Always so beautiful.”

He pressed hard, grinding her clit against her pubic bone. Kate groaned, bucked back into him. Her ass sat perfectly in the cradle of his hips and Castle ground himself against her with each forward stroke. Thrust his cock into her weeping cunt until she spasmed around him, her body working overtime to bring him over the edge with her. 

Castle grit his teeth, tried to resist that massaging, magnetic, magic pull of her body on him but he couldn’t fight it, couldn’t fight her. Not after the past month. Not ever. He came inside her in a gushing wave, called out her name and felt the spasms of her sex start anew. 

Castle panted, pressed them both into the back of the couch. Kate trembled in his arms. Tiny little earthquakes rippled under her skin, muscles all misfiring. He freed her from the bra and withdrew from her. She whimpered. Something in his chest clenched. 

“Turn around, Kate.” 

This time he did step back. Gave her room to reorient herself free of him. It took longer than he wanted, ten seconds instead of five, but she turned, chin angled to her chest and hair a curtain around her face. 

His heart ached in ways he hadn't known previously a heart could. “Kate.” 

Trails of dried salt ran the length of her cheeks when she tipped her face up, a crushed flower. Castle palmed her cheeks and her eyelids fluttered. She listed into him, hands glancing off his thighs. 

“Kate,” he repeated, unsure why really other than he just needed to say her name. To remind her of who she was. Not Beckett or Detective or a daughter avenging her mother's murder. Just Kate. The woman he wanted and needed. Loved. “Okay?” 

Her nod was certain. She looked at him through her lashes, eyes unreadable. He wanted to— so much. He wanted to do and say and ask so much that it was overwhelming. There was no where to start because there was just _ so much _. 

Her voice was quiet but firm. “Take me to bed, Castle.”

A shiver shook down his spine. Kate started on the buttons of his shirt, attention focused on her task and her her knuckles brushing the bare skin of his chest with each button she slipped open. Two fingers at her chin, Castle tilted her face up. Dipped his lips to hers. She opened for him without prodding, her tongue coming out to greet his at the door as she let her body come to rest against his. 

The weight of her unbalanced him, made him sway on the spot. Castle stepped back, arm wrapped around her waist. Kate ran a hand up his chest, into his hair. Groaned. She walked him backwards across the apartment to her bedroom. 

Yes.

This was it. 

This was what perfection felt like. 

* * *

Castle let her undress him, but when he saw the mess on her thighs, he pushed her back to her bed and crawled in after her.

Parted her legs, wedged his shoulders between her knees when she bucked. 

“Castle,” she warned. “I—”

He bowed his head to her sex, spreading her open with his thumbs. Kissed her chastely, if this could be chaste, a touch of his lips to hers. She mewled—he loved that sound—and she buried her fingers in his hair, clutching.

Castle rubbed with his thumbs, licked at the come that spilled from her body. “This is part of my fantasy too. Did you know?” He sucked lightly on the swollen flesh and she grunted, a knee catching his ear. 

“Sorry, shit, sorry,” she gasped, fingers clutching at his hair.

He chuckled and her hips jerked, but he caught her thigh in time to prevent another boxing of his ears. She writhed as he spread her open again, guttural noises as he bent to eat her out.

“Oh my God,” she moaned. “Oh God.”

He made a noise like _ you better _ and was rewarded with her violent shudder as the vibrations hit. He really loved her taste, had promised himself he’d get back to this, but there was something _ dirty _ about tasting himself on her too.

His own seed, eating himself out of her body. Her cream against his face, the tickle of her pubic hair, the clutch of her fingers as she rose into him. He made an arrow of his tongue and pushed inside; she gave a little scream.

He lifted his head.

“Don’t _ stop _,” she gasped. 

Instead of obeying, he propped himself up on an elbow and slicked two fingers around her clit. Around, around again. She jolted with each pass, whined her disapproval, while he watched her face, the taut twisting of need move across her.

Oh yeah, she was going to come all right.

Castle flicked his thumb over her clit and penetrated her with two fingers. She cried out, hips pitching up, and he pressed her back down so he could work his fingers inside her. Lowering his head, a light lick at her clit while he pumped his fingers. Slowly, slowly. Scraping thick digits against her front wall, remembering what it had felt like to be balls deep in her, every shallow thrust jolting that spot.

She writhed now, shying under his mouth. “Oh God,” panting, clutching his head, thighs pressing at his ear and shoulder. “Oh my _ God. _”

He dragged out of her body, resumed tongue-fucking her instead. She was sweat-soaked and twisting, a hoarse constant cry from her open mouth. He had to keep pressing her open, his stimulation on the rough side of raw, sucking his own come out of her body to be sure he’d gotten all of it.

Every last taste of her. Every wild seed.

She ground her hips up against his teeth, yanked on his head. Desperation gave her strength, but he broke her grip and removed his mouth.

“No,” she mewled.

Castle gave her a crooked smile, knowing she could see the shine of her juices on his mouth. “No?”

“Please, I—”

“Please? For a month you’ve avoided me, and now it’s please?”

She put a hand over her eyes, hips bucking. “Please,” she husked. “I don’t know how to… just please.” Her ragged breath made his chest clench. “Please let me come.”

“I can do that.” He palmed her thigh and rubbed slowly, dropped a kiss to the jut of her pelvis. “I will do that, because you asked so nicely.” He nipped his teeth at her hip bone.

“What are you doing now?” she whimpered. She dropped her hand, cupped the back of his head, lashes fluttering as she lifted bodily into his open-mouthed kiss.

“Making your dreams come true,” he murmured in response. Licked her belly button.

“Oh,” she said. _ Oh. _Her lashes met her cheeks, her breasts rising as if to meet his mouth. He obliged, kissing under her nipple, distracting her with these light brushes of his tongue, his lips. Traveling up her body until he was lifted over her.

When she was squirming, breathless, her eyes locked on his, he pushed his fingers back inside her.

Kate cried out, arching, the clamp of her body around his fingers like a vise.

“You’re so strong,” he whispered, watching her fall apart in stages.

First the wide eyes, the impossible _ possible _ in them. Her mouth dropping open but unable to speak past the onrush of sensation. He thrust his fingers as he watched her, the way her body seemed to fill up with it.

And then her climax came. A bright and dizzying sight, a fullness that burst out of her eyes, her mouth, glowing at her chest. He worked her through the first intensity, pumping his fingers, and when she was weak-walled and whimpering, he eased out of her sex and petted her creamed folds, the maze of her pleasure, the jewel-center of her clit.

Petted her until she begged him to stop.

* * *

Her hands fisted in his hair and he let his mouth be pulled to hers. Let lips and tongue and—_ shit _—teeth work against his while her body still jerked and quivered. Castle painted wet fingers across her hip, up the strung bow curve of her side as she arched into him. Her moan vibrated against his chest when he twisted her nipple between the slick pads of his index finger and thumb. 

She was hungry. 

He could feel it in the way she kissed him. Wild and messy and devouring. Artless. It was raw and real. There was nothing intentionally seductive about it, nothing performative. Her mouth on his, sweat-damp body rolling into him, fingers fisting in his hair and his name rumbling low in her throat—it was all real want. Real need. Real desire. 

“Tell me the rest of your fantasy, Kate.” He nosed at her cheek, eased her down into the mattress with the slow press of his weight. “Tell me how this should go.” 

Her lips crawled across his jaw, fingers trailing in their wake. She scraped her nails along his stubble and ran the tip of her toe over the the swell of his calf. Her leg wrapped around his and her mouth set fire to his skin, hands running slowly over every piece of him she could reach. Rocking under him, she told him her fantasy in the only way she knew how. 

Her legs came up easy around his hips when he nestled down between her thighs, heels pressing into the hollow spaces behind his knees. Castle held himself over her on a bent elbow, free hand trailing over her flank. 

Her hair fanned out around her head on the pillow, a wild chestnut shot through with bursts of sunlight. Kate looked up at him with wide, doe eyes and his heart took a handful of stuttering steps against his sternum. It was so much like he’d always imagined it would be. 

Their first time. 

Her body under his, warm and welcoming, with her hair spread out over the pillow (though it should be _ his _ pillow). Mouth swollen with his kisses, sex wet against his groin, heart beating so hard that he could feel her breastbone vibrating. It was everything he had wanted. It was perfect. 

It wasn’t real. 

“Castle,” she whispered, hands kneading the muscles low in his back. “Please.” 

Fuck it. 

No, it wasn’t the first time they were doing this. Fine. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t fucking treat it like it was. She wanted to shut him out? Keep him away from her, from this thing between them, for weeks? All because of some fucked up, ridiculous idea that she wasn't good enough for it? For him?

He would goddamn show her good enough.

“Is this how it goes, Kate?” He ran a finger down the line of her throat, felt her swallow thickly against him. Castle dipped his head and followed the same path with his tongue. She whined, rocked her hips, and he smiled against her skin. “Slow, soft touches that have you crawling out of your skin because you want so much more.”

Castle reached back, drew a lopsided circle around the bony knob of her ankle. He traced a meandering line up her leg, taking detours and backtracking whenever the mood struck him. Kate sighed and shifted her hips, hands massaging his ass. 

Her eyes went wide when he hiked up her leg and bent his knee out underneath it, pressed himself more fully into that beautifully wet and humid place between her legs. He was hard again and he let his cock bump against her without guidance or direction. Kate’s mouth fell open and he sucked her bottom lip between his own, palmed her breast. 

“And then it gets a little faster,” he said, squeezing her breast until she arched. The back of her head pressed into the pillow, exposed the long line of her throat. Castle nipped at the pulse that throbbed there, lapped at the salt on her skin as she mouthed wordlessly. “A little more aggressive.” 

Castle grabbed one of her wrists and lifted her arm up over her head. He kept his hold, pressed her arm down into the give of her mattress and leveraged himself up over her body. Kate ran her unrestrained hand over his chest and he caught her by the fingers, brought her hand to his mouth. Castle dusted soft kisses across her knuckles and turned her arm over, bit hard at the inside of her wrist, right over that faint scar, the only thing remaining of the real first time they’d done this. 

Her cry was sharp and piercing. It resonated in his chest and sent fresh blood pumping into his cock. Good. Let her feel it, this pain he’d been in for the last few weeks (the last year). Let it sting at her skin the way the memory of her stung at his heart. 

Her skin burned hot against his when he twisted his grip on her wrist and shoved her hand down between their bodies. She wrapped instinctively around his cock, fingers thin and lithe and cool. Castle bucked into her touch, leg hair rasping against the bedding. She pumped him fast and hard, bumped the head of his cock against her clit as she humped into her own rhythm. 

Castle slapped her hand away. Took control. Watched her face as she looked down her body at the sight of him gripping himself between her legs. Her fingers danced across her clit and he let her play as he slid the head of his cock along the wet lips of her cunt. 

He spread her open slowly, teased them both with intentional misses. Kate abandoned her clit, reached instead for his torso, dug her nails into his chest as he slipped an inch inside of her and then pulled out. In again, a little deeper this time. Back out. Again. And again. Until her breath was ragged and his cock was a mess, her wetness all over him. 

Kate barked out his name in breathless surprise when he slammed into her, thrusting himself in as deep as he could possibly go. She gripped the back of his neck and her heels dug in against his thighs. Castle held himself there, seated to the hilt, and tilted his hips down into her. 

“Oh, God.” The hand above her head fisted and flexed, reached for him. “Castle.” 

He pulled back and slammed home again, set up a hard pace that had his knees digging into the bed and her breasts shimmying on her chest. Kate met him thrust for thrust, responsive and needy and begging for _ more _ and _ harder _. He fucked her fast and rough, gave her what she asked for.

Until he stopped. 

Castle released her wrist, slid his fingers up through the knot of her fist. Her fingers unfurled from her palm with the pressure from his. Castle slid in between them, spread her thin fingers out with his thick ones. He clasped her hand and his chest lurched when she held him back. 

“But after the hard and fast comes the slow, right, Kate?” Her mouth was slack when he kissed her but her body clenched around him at the rock of his hips, reminded her of the way they were connected. “You fight against the slow. Always have. But it’s not because you don’t want it.” 

Castle dragged his lips across the sharp line of her jaw, nibbled on the lobe of her ear. He squeezed her hand. Her body quivered against him when he gave a protracted withdrawal and reentry of his cock. Kate whimpered, hid her face in the side of his neck. 

“No,” Castle said, mouth in her hair, fucking her as painfully slowly as he could make himself. “It’s because you _ do _ want it. And it scares you.” 

“_Castle. _” 

He wanted to look into her eyes, wanted to make her all those promises she still wasn’t ready to hear, no matter how much he showed her. How much he loved her. So he found her mouth instead. Kissed her like it was the last time. The first time. Every time. 

“You don’t have to be scared, Kate,” he murmured against her lips, soft enough that she could pretend not to hear him. “I’m here.” He kissed her mouth, her cheek, her temple. “I’m always here.” 

She rolled under him, moaned. Her head tossed and she bucked but Castle kept his pace, brought her to the edge with a slow burning fire that engulfed them both. She kissed him until his lips were numb and sore and then came back for more, her tongue swiping through his mouth with the same deceptively subtle intensity as his cock inside of her. Kate had fallen under the spell of his rhythm, and she’d come to time her hips perfectly with his. 

Her eyes were closed but he didn’t care. Not when he could feel her surrender in the heat of her skin and the give of her muscle and the rolling wave of her hips. She was back in this. Whatever the hell it was they were doing, _ they _ were doing it again. Not just him. 

“Come for me.” Her body shuddered when he let himself down fully on top of her, worked his free hand in between their groins. Castle thumbed her clit and her legs opened wider for him, pelvis shifting. “Come for me, Kate.” 

“Yes,” she breathed, squeezing his hand and running her palm over his back. “Castle. _ Yes _. Come with me.” 

Castle grunted and his hips snapped. 

_Come with me._

Fuck slow. 

He pounded into her, bodies slapping together obscenely, and Kate cried out, her open mouth at his shoulder. Tight muscles clenched around his cock in waves and she gasped at his ear, her nails digging into in the back of his hand where he still held her. Castle turned his face into her neck and bit down, everything he needed to tell her muted by the taste of her sweaty skin on his tongue. He came on a deep grunt, lungs heaving like bellows. 

The fog started to clear from his brain after a minute and Castle felt her, thin and reedy, shaking underneath him. He rolled to the side, intent to give her space to do—whatever she needed. 

Kate followed. 

Hands curled into the bare skin of his chest, she pressed herself against him. Aligned their hills and valleys until every possible inch of skin was touching. She pressed her nose against the hollow of his throat and took a deep breath. 

“Kate?” 

She nodded. “Just—stay like this. For a minute. Okay?” 

Hot tears pricked at his eyes and Castle wrapped his arm around her back, pressed his lips to the fine hair at her forehead. 

“As long as you need, Kate,” he breathed, felt her shudder. “I’ll be here.” 


	7. Pandora

** _CASTLE_ **

_ Yeah, like saving the world. We’re all on the same team here. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ No, you’re on her team. ‘Cause the way you look at her, you’re sure as hell not on mine. _

  
  


* * *

Beckett scrubbed her hands over her face and leaned back against her apartment door. She’d come home with no more of a clue as to Gage’s whereabouts than she had with a bag over her head—

The flashback of memory haunted her: Castle standing in the dead woman’s hall, silent and faceless and somehow not human, made  _ other _ by the dark apparition of his form without words, without reference, without everything that made him  _ him _ .

She swallowed and lifted away from the door, unholstering her weapon and leaving it on the steel counter. She began taking off the coat; an arm caught in the faux lamb’s wool lining. She was tired. She was frustrated and  _ hurt _ , damn it, and she wanted him to be on her side.

But he wasn’t.

Sophia fucking Turner.

She pulled off her holster and went back to her weapon, checked it carefully because she wasn’t going to let the CIA hand her back her gun and not do a damn thorough inspection. She handled it with dedication, precision, the clip, the sight, the trigger. She stalked back through the bedroom and put the gun and clip in the box at her bedside bureau.

Blew out a breath. Castle standing in the hallway, the bag over his head, and that terror rising in her throat, that terror—

She scraped both hands through her hair, arms over her head, took another deep breath. Okay. The damn CIA. That was all it had been, the CIA going for theatrics; his ex- _ muse _ had been the one to put a bag over his head and make them think the worst.

Beckett snagged a rubber band, twisted it back over the bun of her hair. She turned around and prowled back through the apartment, looking for alcohol.

She found a bottle of wine that wouldn’t do much, but it might be enough. She plucked a regular glass from the cupboard and poured more than was healthy for alone in her apartment after being abducted by the CIA. But she needed liquid courage after today. And okay, fine, she needed the release, the unwind, after signing onto an investigation she was supposed to keep secret from her boss ( _ his  _ fault, saying  _ yes of course _ before even looking her way for confirmation). This wasn’t even her real team; she didn’t  _ know _ these people. And yes, the Chief of Detectives would back her, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

None of this was going to be pretty.

She swallowed a mouthful of wine and willed her body to relax. If she didn’t unwind a little tonight, it was only going to get worse. No way Sophia Turner cared about her murder case, her  _ victim _ . But Beckett did; she was the one who cared. And she would do this alone if she had to.

Stress. Tension. She didn’t want a relapse. Maybe she needed to call Dr Burke’s office again. She’d had to cancel her last appointment, and she hadn’t told him yet about the… indiscretion from before.  _ Tell me your fantasies, Kate. _

Shit. Okay, the wine was working, but it was also bringing up some vivid memories that were best left untouched.

And yet, she took the bottle with her to the couch and sank down, poured a little more. She put her feet up and sat back, her head against the cushions, and used the wine to blot out the memory of a bag over her head (of the pure pleasure on his face when Sophia Turner called his name in her secret basement lair).

When the knock came on her door, she didn’t want to answer. But she found herself rising to her feet and heading for the entry.

Knowing what lay beyond that door.

* * *

Castle barrelled past her, a stiff hot breeze that made her nipples peak against the soft lined cups of her bra. Kate closed the door and followed him into the living room. She wasn’t going to be trapped in her entryway like an injured animal this time. 

“Castle, what—” 

He turned on the spot and her words caught. This wasn’t contrite Castle, the poor kicked puppy coming to ask for forgiveness for making a mess. No. Not even close.

“The way I ‘look’ at Sophia means I’m not on your team? What the fuck does that even  _ mean _ , Beckett?” 

Her hands fisted against her thighs. That he even had to ask—That he didn’t  _ know _ — 

Kate shook her head. “It’s not important, Castle. Just go home.” 

She couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Not standing in the room where she’d let him break her resolve with all those pretty words and the soft sweep of his thumb behind her ear. Not next to her couch like he hadn’t bent her over it four nights before and fucked her to tears with the force of his feelings. His hopes and dreams. 

For  _ them _ . 

He’d never said it. Of course not. But they both knew. And now she couldn’t stand here and explain to him why his goddamned teenage mooning over Sophia fucking Turner meant that he wasn’t actually on  _ Kate’s _ damn team. 

She moved past him, reached for her wine on a sigh. “Just go home.” 

“Like hell.” 

His fingers—those thick fingers that were still somehow so agile, adept at breaking her apart with only the faintest of twitches—wrapped around her bicep. Jerked. Kate came off one foot, spun on the ball of the other. Her hands slammed into his chest and that tightly knotted ball of anger inside hers exploded. 

“Get your hands off me,” she spit, pushing off hard from his pecs but not stepping back. No. 

Not this time. She pushed  _ him _ away. 

And he stepped back. “Tell me what your damn problem is.” 

Her problems were myriad. Not being able to talk about her problems  _ was _ one of her fucking problems. But this—oh, this she could talk about. 

“My  _ problem _ , Castle, is you with  _ her _ .” His head rocked back like she’d slapped him and her heart twisted a little but she didn’t stop. Not now. “You’re on my team, my side, until it’s more convenient or exciting to be on someone else’s.” 

“That’s not what this is, Beckett.” 

She smirked, let her face twist into the ugliness she felt. “Isn’t it?” 

“No,” Castle insisted. He stepped forward, their bodies almost touching, loomed over her in her flat feet. “I’ve been here, with  _ you _ , every day that you’ve let me—for four years.” 

That she’d let him. 

The scars along her ribs twinged, the phantom pain that flared up whenever she thought about those lonely months after—

“Your head is turned pretty easily, Castle. Jordan Shaw, James Bond, Serene Kaye,” she ticked off his transgressions on the fingers of one hand, watched his pulse throb in his neck with each one. “And now Sophia. But, you know what? It’s fine. You don’t have to be here. If the CIA is where you want to be, go ahead. I’m not stopping you.”

“I’m just trying to work this case. Why is that such a crime?”

It wasn’t. It shouldn’t be. But she could still hear it, the slow, awed roll of his tongue when he had said her name.  _ Sophia Turner _ . Could see the fascination that still danced in his eyes when he looked at her, tall and exotic and impressive. It ate at her, gnawed at her already decimated confidence until she was left teetering on the edge. 

“Because you’re not working my case. You’re working  _ hers _ .”

He growled at her. “They’re the same thing.” 

“No, they’re not. And I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” 

“We’re all on the same side here, Beckett. The same team.” 

Kate scoffed, tipped her chin up at him. “If you actually think that, then you’re really not my partner at all.” 

She watched it hit him. Square in the chest, center of mass. Watched his head snap forward and his eyes slam shut. Castle hands came up to grip her biceps, thumbs pressing hard against her shoulders. His chest hitched, shaking her to the bone with the violence of it, and she thought he might cry. Then his eyes opened and her mouth went dry. 

“That’s bullshit,” he spit, eyes an icy blue and voice thick with anger, “and you know it.” 

He tasted like scotch and fury when he slammed his mouth into hers. 

* * *

“You need proof, Beckett?” He spoke against her lips, teeth making her fists clench. In his dress shirt. “You want to  _ feel _ how much I’m on your team?” He thrust against her and she shuddered, clutching.

“Proof?” She was fucking tired of this  _ neediness _ , of not being in control. Tired of ping-ponging from despair to ecstasy. “I’m a detective, Castle. What do you think?”

He growled and backed her up against the counter; she fought back, going for his belt, tugging the black leather from the metal frame and pulling it back, releasing the prong. He grabbed for her hands. “You gonna tie me up with my own belt?”

“A bit derivative, don’t you think?” She  _ hated _ the flare of triumph on his face, as if her allusion to their previous encounters was an admission of something. Guilt, that was all it was. She was guilty as charged for wanting him, no matter how damaging, how much she was ruining what they might have in the future. “I don’t need your damn belt to put you in your place.”

He grinned and grabbed her by the hips, hiked her up on the steel counter. “Are you now?”

She ripped his belt out and tossed it on the floor, reached for his zipper. He chuckled and it made her furious. She wrapped a leg around his hip and brought him in close; he crushed his mouth to hers as if to devour her. She gave it back, took over, biting his bottom lip as she yanked down his zipper. Dove for his cock, thrilled to find him already hard, growing harder.

From her vantage point on her counter, she ripped away, jerked her head back when he tried for her mouth again. “Ah-ah.” She pushed into his gaping pants, nudged them down. “These need to go.”

“What about you?”

“I got me, Castle. You figure out you.”

His head tilted, and she knew he was loading her words with things she didn’t mean. She grabbed the hem of her sweater and yanked it over her head, pulled the rubber band out of her hair when the bun collapsed. She dropped the creamy top to the floor, tossed the rubber band after it, and she shook out her hair. She watched his eyes lock on her breasts in the nude bra, and she nudged him with her foot to get him moving.

Castle began divesting himself of his pants, switched gears to unbutton the dress shirt, changed course once more to shove down the pants. She chewed on her bottom lip to keep back a smirk, popped open the button on her jeans. Leaning back, a hand on the counter to brace herself, waiting until he was watching. She lifted her hips, heel digging into the shelving. 

Pushed her pants down, slowly, one hip at a time. 

His pants dropped, a thud as wallet and keys and phone hit the ground with them. He didn’t even seem to notice. Staring at her breasts as she kicked off her jeans. She was really working them down in as laborious a method as possible. Torture him like he’d tortured her every night since this had started (in her dreams, or in her waking fantasies, or alone in her bed with her fingers between her legs trying to reproduce an orgasm as  _ close _ to intense as even the minor ones he’d given her).

Castle shed his shirt in a manner that was entirely too dignified, unbuttoning his cuffs, folding the material, laying it beside her on the counter. Of course, his eyes  _ were _ fixed on her bra-clad breasts, the length of her torso, her bare legs, but he was more unruffled than she liked. “You gonna take off that bra, or do I need to tie it behind you again?”

“You’re not running this show, Castle.” She kept the bra on but went straight to her panties, letting her ass hit the cold metal, her hips twitching. “Get those boxers off and get on your knees. You’re supposed to be proving something.”

His nostrils flared, but he did as she commanded, stripping off his boxers (and sucking in his stomach as he did, which made her heart twist in her chest and her body lean out for him, and she shouldn’t do this to him; she shouldn’t—)

But his hands on her knees made her shiver; he caressed her thighs and brought her panties all the way down and off. “Anything for this,” he husked, tugging her to the edge of the counter. “Proof or no proof.” And then he went to his knees and pressed his face between her legs.

Beckett groaned, grabbed the back of his head and held him against her, urging her hips into him. His tongue teased her thigh, his teeth at her folds before spreading her open. She angled her knees out, feet against his shoulders, bucking into his slow perusal. Needing more.

His fingers tickled at her thighs; her hips rolled up. He played at her sex, his tongue darting to her clit, retreating. She grunted, twisting his ear to get him closer, where she needed it. In all her solo efforts the last lonely weeks, she hadn’t been able to get even close to this,  _ this, _ this feeling between her legs, the intensity that eclipsed her life and made it  _ more _ .

“God,” she gasped, arching into his teeth. His tongue against her, the rough edge of bristle on his jaw—she didn’t know what sensation to focus on, tongue, teeth, lips, fingers. “Castle.”

He spoke between her legs, words she couldn’t understand, words he began writing against her sex, inside her, as if telling stories to her body. She shuddered, gripping him harder, trying not to fly apart this soon, after so little, but it was impossible to hang on. Her body responded to his words, to the way his mouth moved over her, how it felt to press her thighs against his head and buck into his tongue and be good enough, finally be good enough—

She cried out, the orgasm washing over her in hot, angry waves.

* * *

Her hands fisted against the onslaught, one in his hair and one around the edge of the table. Castle worked her relentlessly with his lips and tongue. He pressed her knees open wide and devoured her, moaning against her cunt with each jerking hump of her hips into his mouth. 

Kate looked down at him, dizzy, and almost came again at the sight of him crouched there and pumping his cock in short, hard strokes. She dug her fingernails into the ridge at the base of his skull and groaned. 

“Stop.”

His tongue sliced across her clit and she jumped, tailbone cracking against the counter. Castle laughed against her cunt, a low rumble that made her toes curl under and her insides liquefy. She brought her heel up to his shoulder and kicked out. His mouth released from her cunt with an obscenely wet pop and Castle went toppling over onto his ass. Angry blue eyes stared up at her, cock still gripped in his fist. 

“What the hell, Beckett?” 

She was only Beckett to him tonight. He hadn’t called her Kate once. Hadn’t tried to pull this into that quasi-intimacy he cloaked them in every other time they’d done this. A sudden, shocking grief filled her chest at the realization. Kate breathed against the burn of it, shut it down. 

Tonight was not for that. 

“You’re shit at following instructions,” she told him, grateful for the strength in her voice. Kate pulled a foot up to rest on the ledge of the counter, exposed herself to him. “I told you to stop.” 

Castle swallowed. She made sure his eyes were tracking her hand when she skimmed her fingers up the length of her thigh, across her hip. She slipped down between her legs and rubbed, spreading herself open with two fingers. Castle licked his lips when she pulled the hood back on her clit and circled, and she felt the raw surge of power rise up in her chest. 

With two fingers pressed inside herself, Kate whimpered, letting her head loll to one shoulder. Castle grunted and shifted, hands moving to support his weight. He clambered back to his knees and Kate lifted her leg, pointed her toe against the hard muscle of his pec. Castle stared at her, cock thick and rigid between them and one finger trailing up and down the line of her calf. 

“You stay there,” she ordered, pressing until he was down on his haunches, most of his weight off his knees. 

His finger caressed her leg all the way to tip of her big toe. Kate planted her left hand on the cold steel counter top and leaned back, pressing her hips forward and spreading her thighs even wider. The move dropped her shoulders back, opening and exposing her chest. She pumped her fingers inside herself and Castle watched with rapt attention. 

Kate soaked up the way he watched her, desperate for that feeling and hating herself for it. She had stopped lying to herself about not appreciating the way he looked at her years ago. Long before lies and shootings and relationships with second ex-wives and motorcycle riding doctors. She liked how he looked at her, how he appreciated her mind and her body. It was vain and petty and she knew it but she didn’t care. 

What she hadn’t fully stopped lying to herself about was that she wanted to be the  _ only _ one he looked at that way. That it didn’t bother her when he appreciated women like Natalie Rhodes or Serena Kaye. Or Sophia fucking Turner with her curly hair and her fancy tech and underground bunkers. 

He had researched with Sophia for a year and still he looked at her with that same mix of reverence and little boy awe that made her stomach into a hard knot in her gut. 

“Beckett,” Castle groaned, knees spread wide on her kitchen floor and a stranglehold on his cock. “Beckett, I need to get off this floor and fuck you. Now.”

Kate shook her head. “No.” She fucked herself slowly, deliberately, as he gazed up at her, a hunger in his eyes that made her shiver. “For once you’re gonna follow my orders and stay where I tell you to.” 

Castle grunted, displeasure evident in the timbre of it. But he didn’t try to move. 

That lighting in a bottle feeling filled her chest again and she stared down at him, electricity pouring out of her fingertips as she fucked herself hard and raw at the edge of the island. Castle writhed on the floor beneath her, the muscles in his thighs and core flexing and releasing in groups as he stroked his cock and worked to keep himself upright simultaneously. His eyes flicked back and forth between her cunt and her face and she tried to not let it all out, not to let him see everything this was doing to her. Everything  _ he _ was doing to her. 

Castle whined her name and Kate’s gaze snapped to his cock. She licked her lips when his balls pulled up tight to his body, gave her clit a hard squeeze. He fell back hard on his ass, legs spilling out like noodles, and humped hard into his fisted hand, fucked the tight space she knew they both wished was her cunt instead. 

He came on a great heaving sigh, head falling back and throat bobbing as he panted. 

Kate stared down at him, cunt drenched and hand still pumping. 

* * *

“You’ve ruined me,” she croaked. Hating the way her voice broke. She couldn’t  _ get _ there; she was desperate and her hand was cramping and he was sprawled on his back, not even looking at her any more.

“What,” he gasped.

She climbed down, hips popping as she tiptoed around his loose legs, and she settled on his stomach.

“Shit,” he panted, gripping her hips and jerking his eyes to her. “You didn’t come?” 

She dipped her knees to the floor and rocked forward, withdrew her fingers so she could feel the tremor of his stomach. His eyes widened and the hunger came back, his hands tightening on her hips and helping her rock.

It burned so good. “That’s—” She bowed her head, whimpering as the little fires licked up through her cunt. Her lashes fluttered, her chest heaving for breath. “Oh, God.”

“That’s it,” he growled. “You got this.”

She cried out, neck arching, eyes squeezed shut. Rubbed herself against him with a fury that shouldn’t still be there, so deep, so painful. 

He squeezed her thighs, bruising, and slowly reached back to rub his palms against her ass. His eyes feasting on her. “I want to watch you come against me.”

“Oh God,” she breathed, twisting against his chest. Needing it.

“You got this, one more, Beckett.”

Her thighs were shaking, knees crunching against the tile. But between her legs was a fire that wouldn’t be suffocated, kept bursting into flame every time she thought she had it tamed. But it wouldn’t  _ come _ . 

She rocked desperately, wishing she wasn’t such a fucking selfish bitch, wishing she could just do it alone, wishing—

“You need me?” he said roughly. His thumb swiped through the wetness between them; it was a mixture of his own come and her arousal. She’d made him get himself off, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. “ _ You need me _ .”

“Castle,” she bit out, turning her head.

“Say it.” His thumb teased along the spread folds of her sex against him. “Say you need me for this.”

She grit her teeth, rocking against his stomach, a dart of pleasure every time her clit even  _ glanced _ across his thumb.

“You want it, then you pay the price.”

“God damn it, I  _ need you _ .”

He crushed her clit with a thumb and she jolted. He followed, chased her clit, a hard circle that had her crying out.

The orgasm smashed into her sideways.

Castle caught her around the neck and dragged her down to him, smothering her moans with his mouth. He used his fingers like a cock, dragging out her shaking, shuddering violence with his persistence. Pulling the orgasm out of her until she had to grip his wrist and roll off him, plastered to the floor with sweat, trying to breathe.

She swallowed, feeling his pulse pounding beneath her fingers. Throbbing. She sucked in a breath and let it out with a soft sigh:  _ I need you. _

He twisted his hand to clasp hers, and for a moment, their fingers laced.

She gained her strength and rolled onto her side, lifting herself up on an elbow, untangling their hands. “You should—”

“Go,” he finished. “I should go.” His eyes held hers a moment too long, and she couldn’t resist dipping her mouth to his. Touching his lips. His hand lifted to caress her cheek and she pulled back. 

“I have a case to solve.”

* * *

  
  


** _BECKETT_ **

_ Hey. What are you doing here? _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ I found something. It's about Blakely. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ Well, shouldn't you tell Sophia about it? _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ She isn't my partner. You are. May I? _


	8. Linchpin

** _BECKETT _ **

_ You like him. _

** _SOPHIA_ **

_ I did. Once. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ So what happened, if you don't mind my asking? _

** _SOPHIA_ **

_ Well, um, you ever meet someone and – and have that intense attraction right away? You know, that tension? Well, we fought it for months and then – and then we just couldn't stand it anymore. But afterward it was like that tension was all we had, really, and without it all we were left with was that – well, all those things that drove us crazy about each other. I mean, you know how he can be. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ Yeah. Yeah, I do. _

** _SOPHIA_ **

_ Sometimes I wish we had never slept together. Had kept that longing. _

* * *

Kate sat at her desk, paperwork she couldn't complete stacked up in front of her. At least she didn't have to worry about the requisition for a new cruiser anymore. She twirled her pen around her thumb, that mostly unconscious move that had seemed to fascinate Castle from the start.  _ How do you do that? _ he always asked, trying in vain to replicate the spin with his own pen and thumb. In four years, he had never quite gotten there, never quite mastered it. 

Yet still he tried. 

When she leaned back, the chair cushion let out a sigh just a pitch or two higher than her own, and she scrubbed her hands over her tired eyes. This wasn’t getting done tonight. Or ever, most likely. There was no sanitized version of her—their—time with the CIA that would satisfy Gates and she certainly couldn’t write that she and Castle had played a part in stopping the next World War. Or, at the least, the murder of an innocent little girl at the hands of a tratorious CIA agent. 

She stared at the desk for half a minute more. Shook her head and stood. Screw it. She needed a drink. She needed to get the hell out of the precinct. She needed—

“Castle.” 

“Hey,” he said, standing next to his chair, two mugs in hand. He lifted one to her, gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I brought refills.” 

“Thanks.” Their fingers brushed when she took the mug from him, that ever present current of electricity passing between them. 

Kate sat the coffee on her desk then plucked the second mug from his hand and put it down next to the first. Castle’s brows knit together in that way that always made her want to reach out and smooth her thumb across his forehead, relieve him of the unnecessary weight he ascribed to her simple actions. 

“Let’s get out of here, Castle.” Kate shoved an arm into her coat, tried not to smile when he reached for the other side. His fingers smoothed over her collar and she freed her hair, turned to look at him. “I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell could use a drink.” 

He still wore that same pained, wistful look from their meeting with Danberg and she wished like hell she knew what to say, what to do, how to help him. Make this better for him some way. To answer his questions about his father and ease his pain. Make his smile reach his eyes again. 

Castle turned, swept his hand toward the elevator. “First round’s on me.” 

Their shoulders bumped on the way to the elevator. She gave Espo and Ryan a nod on the way out, got a respective jerk of the chin and soft eyed shrug in return. They got it. They may not have known the classified details but they were smart men, they knew knew how partnerships worked. Sometimes a hard case needed to be put away with back slaps and attaboys and round after round at the Old Haunt with the whole damn squad. 

And sometimes it just needed to be a quiet letting go, only the essential two. 

Sophia Turner had done a number on him. She’d played him (them) from the start. Lied, manipulated, preyed on Castle’s loyalty and their history in order to use him in ways she knew would hurt the most. Kate hadn’t trusted her—not because she’d suspected her treachery, no, but simply because of the way she’d  _ looked _ at him, like a cat stalking a wounded canary—but Castle had. And when they had been face to face with her deception, the barrel of her gun, Kate had seen it in him, how the betrayal had eclipsed the fear. 

But not her. She could still feel it, that dump of adrenaline, making her heart skip every fifth beat and her muscles twitch randomly. Kneeling next to him there, listening as Sophia had taunted him with stories of his supposedly CIA father, it’d been all she could do to keep her shit together. 

To not let herself cry. 

For him, for her, for all that they’d been about to lose. The report of the gunshot still echoed in her head, even hours later. She could still see him hunching forward, could still feel the agony of that gut-twistingly awful second of thinking he’d been dead. 

Castle. 

The elevator doors slid open and the car was blessedly empty. Kate leaned against the back wall, let Castle press the button for the parking garage. She let her eyes trace over him, observe him without being observed. The way his hair hit his nape right at that spot she loved to trace her fingers across when he kissed her because it was so soft it made her fingertips go numb. The expanse of his shoulders—-wide enough to spread her legs, wide enough to carry the weight of her tragedy. Thick arms that made her feel both held and unbreakable, paw-like hands that played her like a mastered instrument, both body and mind. 

She wanted him. 

Because unlike Sophia Turner, Kate Beckett had had Rick Castle and only wanted him more. 

Wanted the feel of his mouth, his chest, his thighs pressed against hers. Wanted to hear her name in that cracking voice when he couldn’t take it anymore and just needed to come. Wanted to wake up next to him, his heartbeat her alarm clock. Wanted to be able to give him everything she could see he wanted when he smiled at her. 

Kate reached out and hooked her index finger around his pinky. Castle jumped as though she’d tasered him. He looked down at their hands and blinked. Looked over his shoulder at her. That furrow was back between his brows. Kate gave his finger a soft, squeezing tug and tried to keep the anxiety off her face. Out of her voice. 

“Come home with me.” 

Castle turned to her, his gaze flicking over her face. Kate held still and let him look, let him examine her for the sign he needed that this was— whatever he needed it to be. The elevator dinged and Castle blinked. Kate let her finger slide down the length of his when the doors disengaged. 

Their eyes met and she swallowed fire. 

Kate stepped out of the elevator on legs much steadier than she’d expected. Castle followed her through the parking garage, an electrically charged shadow. She found where Danberg’s team had parked her refurbished cruiser and popped the locks from three spaces away. 

Castle slid quietly into the passenger seat and buckled his belt, reaching out to finger the shiny new console as if he couldn't resist touching, even now. 

They pulled out into traffic and she reached for his hand. She heard him swallow when she simply laced her fingers through his. She dragged his arm into her lap, held their clasped hands on her thigh for the rest of the drive to her apartment. 

* * *

To be honest, Castle had no idea what to expect when she unlocked her front door. She’d held his hand all the way up to her apartment, all down the hall, giving him these encouraging looks over her shoulder as she led. Not sex-laced looks, not those eyes that smoldered and sparked fire. But tenderness. 

Concern. Compassion.

Now inside, he hesitated at taking off his coat, though he figured this had to be another  _ let’s have sex _ . Right? Why else had she told him to come over?

She reached out, drew his coat off for him, and he thought  _ oh okay now _ , but she turned away to carefully hang his coat over the back of a kitchen chair. Her bag and coat went with it, left on the dining room table. She called from there, “Get us a couple of glasses?”

So they really were going to have a drink. A strange nod to convention after all this time. Mostly he showed up, she showed up, they got right to it. 

Castle pulled down two tumblers, turned—

“No, get the wine glasses,” she chuckled, a hand on his back as she passed him. “I have a good one here that  _ someone _ gave me.”

“Someone gave—oh, that was me.” He blinked and stared at the bottle she’d taken from the fridge. When had he done that? He remembered the label distinctively, a Syrah red, because it had reminded him of her, cherry tart with textures of clove and wild herb. “I got this for you.”

“You sent me home with it,” she corrected. “After the bank robbery.”

He swallowed roughly, another disjointed memory bobbing to the surface like a bad magic eight ball. “We have a thing for saving each other’s lives,” he said, not quite as thoughtlessly as it sounded. He was struggling; he had a much more definitive outline for ‘Father’ than the ambiguous hero he’d made as a child. “Here, take these.”

She shook her head. “Hold them out. I’ll pour.” She’d already worked the cork free, her teeth in her bottom lip as she’d done it, and now she lifted the bottle in salute. “I should let it warm a bit, but I think we’ll have time if we sip slowly.”

Oh. Were they  _ not _ having sex? He didn’t know how to read her these days, so he simply watched the line rise in his glass.

She corked the bottle again and plucked her own glass from his fingers, smiled at him. “I don’t know about you, but I need this.” She left the bottle on the counter but stepped into him, a light kiss against his jaw, a hesitancy to her breath that made him realize she was nervous.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, lifting his free hand to touch her back. Almost a hug. “I need this.” Tightened his arm as she brought herself against him, her ear to his shoulder. A hug.

Kate curled the glass against his chest, her other arm sliding around his waist. He lifted his head and put his chin to her temple, a slow breath. She sipped her wine, shifting only as much as she had to, and he clinked glasses with her as he took a sip of his own.

She slipped her fingers under the placket of his button-up and lightly scratched his bare skin. “Come sit with me.” She moved like water, impossible to grasp, sliding around him and towards the living room couch. He turned and followed mutely, remembering the way her hair had floated around her head as he’d fought to free her from the seat belt.

She seemed to be waiting for him, and when he sat down just to one side of the middle of her couch, she came and sat  _ on _ him. Well. One leg thrown over his so that her foot tucked under his knee, her body pressed right at his side, shoulder in his chest. She took a sip of wine and laid her head on his shoulder.

He couldn’t resist lifting his free hand, elbow bending, to touch her hair. She bumped her cheek into his touch the same way she’d bumped his shoulder in the hall as they’d walked. 

God, he loved her. He had no idea what her intention was tonight, but he could close his eyes and never move from this spot if she stayed.

He took a hasty swallow of wine and rubbed fiercely at the burn behind his eyes.

She was watching him when his hand dropped. Tenderness etched on her face. “Does it help?”

“What,” he rasped, mesmerized by the way she watched him.

“Is it helping at all?” Her lips moved, but he didn’t understand a thing she said. He stared at her, lost. She cupped the side of his face and gently touched her lips to his. “Never mind. Come to bed, Castle. Let’s see if we can’t make it better.”

She took the wine from his hand and untangled her legs from his, placed the glasses on the table. He was still dumb and inert on the couch when she turned around and held out her hands to help him up.

He stood, wrapped his arms around her in a burst of need. His voice broke as he muttered in her ear. But he couldn’t stop thinking,  _ seeing _ it, over and over. Drowning, dragging her up in the cold water, hands on her chest to bring her back to him, pumping river water out of her lungs even as he knew the scar was right there, burning, right there under his stacked palms. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and crushed her against him. “I need to bury myself inside you.”

She shivered. But her lips ghosted his as her head pulled back. Eyes dark, soft. “What did I say, Castle? Come to bed.” 

* * *

Castle’s hand shook a little when she took hold of him, she felt his palm damp against her own. His loafers made soft thumps behind her as she shepherded them both through her darkened apartment. Into her bedroom. Kate flipped on the lamp on her dresser, cast the room in a soft amber glow. 

She turned to face Castle, found him staring at her with that same mix of desperation and anguish. Need. Dropping his hand, Kate stepped into him, still almost eye to eye in her heeled boots, and she cradled his cheeks. His gaze drifted over her face, flickering back and forth between her eyes and mouth, hands coming up to grip her waist, pull her in close. Their thighs brushed and she sighed. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” 

It was her standard line, one she’d spoken to him a handful of times. More than she should have had to. But his eyelids fluttered and he listed toward her. Kate leaned into him as a counterbalance, breasts meeting the solid wall of his chest and her thumb brushing along the leading edge of his bottom lip. 

She leaned in, replaced her thumb with her mouth. Her tongue. Castle groaned. Fisted a hand in her hair and the other at small of her back, stretching out the knit of her sweater. He let her control the kiss, his mouth open and wet but yielding. Passive. 

Kate scraped a hand across the back of his neck. Dipped her fingers into the collar of his shirt to get at that sensitive skin at the top of his spine. Castle shivered and swept his tongue across hers. Kate kept going, dragging her hands across his shoulders. Down his chest and over his back. She traced the line where his pants met his body, from his abs and around to his spine. 

His ass flexed when she filled her palms with him. Squeezed. 

“Kate.” Her name barely more than a breath against her own mouth. “ _ Kate _ .” 

“I’m here,” she assured him, lips whispering against his chin, promising what little of herself she could in two words. “ _ We’re _ here. We’re alive and we’re here, Castle.” 

He came awake under her hands. 

Castle surged forward, pushing her back toward her unmade bed. Impatient hands tugged at her sweater, tried to pull it over her head without breaking from her mouth. Her heel caught on the edge of the rug and Kate tumbled backward, landed on her ass on the edge of the mattress, shirt rucked up over her breasts and the button on her jeans popped open. He stared at her, chest heaving, then went down on his knees, head bowed as his hands reached for her boots. 

Her chest constricted, ribs compressing the air from her lungs until she felt like she was back in her cruiser again, sinking to the bottom of the river in the frigid darkness. Goosebumps erupted across her skin and Kate shivered hard enough to rattle the bed frame. 

Castle’s head jerked up, fingers wrapped her bare left foot. 

“Kate?” 

She flailed a blind hand out for him. Curled her fingers in the rumpled shoulder of his dress shirt and pulled. Castle pushed himself up into a squat, knees popping like gunshots. She twitched again and he slid up next to her on the bed, flat hand pressed to her exposed stomach. Kate crashed to the mattress and he followed, always followed, concern crinkling the corners of his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?”

She spoke even as her head shook. “It was so close. She had her gun aimed at the back of your head.” His hand trailed over her waist, stroked at the small of her back when she turned into him, pressed her face against his neck. “If Danberg had been even five seconds later—” 

“But he wasn’t.” Soft lips glanced off her temple, her cheek, the corner of her eye. “He wasn’t.” 

She bit the side of his neck, right under his pulse and he groaned. Castle slid his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, grabbed a handful of her ass. He pulled her closer, ground his hips into her. She felt him there, heavy and hard against her thigh, couldn’t control the soft whine that crawled up out of her throat. 

“We’re here,” he said, mouth trailing fire along the line of her jaw, tongue flicking at her earlobe as he gave her back her own words, her own reassurance. “We’re here and we’re  _ alive _ , Kate.” 

Her hand fisted at the back of his head, the silk of his hair slipping so easily through her fingers. “Kiss me,” she husked, suddenly desperate for him. On the verge of frantic. It welled up inside her, a hot wave threatening to crest over the back of her tongue and spill out, drowning them both. “Kiss me.” 

His mouth was savage against hers. Rough and fearsome and so beautiful. The weight of his body pressed her down into the mattress and she spread her legs wide, welcomed him into the jean-clad cradle of her thighs. 

Heavy hands stroked over her body, pulling off her shirt and plucking open her bra. He thumbed her nipple and Kate arched into the warm cup of his palm, leg wrapping around his thigh to pull him closer. He was all over her, everywhere, but it wasn’t enough. 

There was no such thing as  _ enough _ when they did this. 

Teeth hooked into the ridge of her collarbone and her nipples lifted into hard peaks. Castle dragged his mouth across her chest from one shoulder to the other, traced the dimple of her scar with the tip of his tongue. She worked frantically, fruitlessly, at the buttons of his shirt, needing to feel the heat of his skin pressing against her own. 

His fingers tugged on the zipper of her jeans, slid inside. Hot breath washed over her neck and he cupped her, pressed the wet crotch of her panties against her. 

“Castle,” she begged, not even sure what she was asking for just that she needed something. “Castle, please.” 

Her body bowed, shoulders pressing up into his when he found her clit through the fabric of her underwear. Two fingers circled, fast but light, and she was rocking her hips, mouth searching for his. 

His tongue slipped past her lips and his finger slicked inside her.

Kate cried out, legs clamping hard around his hips. He worked her over with his mouth and one lone finger, brought her up and up and up until there was no other choice but to crash back down. Her orgasm came in a spectacular explosion and she knew. This was it. 

This was the linchpin. 

The piece that sent all the rest of the dominoes falling. 

* * *

He groaned when he finally sank inside her. Warm, wholly encompassing, complete. His breath puffed across her chin. He wondered if she wished differently, something else, more creative or kinky than missionary in her bed, but she had her legs locked so tightly around his hips that he couldn’t change it up if he tried.

It felt so good to be with her.

She placed a tentative kiss to his jaw. As if sensing his hesitation.

He turned his mouth to hers and took her kiss with the same halting fumble. Showing her things he hadn’t meant to, couldn’t hold back. Baring himself in a way that was really stupid when they’d had zero serious conversations about this. 

He just couldn’t help himself. He never could. With her, with Kate Beckett, he’d been doomed from the first.

He touched her lips with his breath, chased it with his own lips, glancing, tantalizing. She gasped and contracted around him. His hips flinched in response. Everything crescendoed to a ridiculous taut peak in  _ moments _ and this couldn’t be how tonight ended.

Oh God, this was going to be how it ended.

“You’re gonna come, aren’t you?” He was pleased by the strain in her voice.

“It’s so imminent I feel the need to apologize,” he grit out. Squeezed his eyes shut, fists in the mattress under her shoulders. He couldn’t even rock his pelvis against hers for fear it would set him off.

“No, don’t apologize. I want you to. I want you to come because you just can’t stave it off.”

“Oh God,  _ stave _ is such a good word.”

She laughed, and the clutch and flutter of her muscles made him whine, trembling on top of her, trying like hell not to let this be it for him.

But it was too late. He gave a hoarse cry as the climax detonated, a sloppy two-thrust attempt to help her along, and then he was done. Still flailing and trying to figure out how to breathe through that needy explosion, damn certain he was not going to collapse on top of her and fall asleep like an asshole.

She hugged him close, preventing his more manly roll-off-and-pant move, her calves and heels digging into his ass, holding him down against her. She nipped his ear. “Words do it for you, huh?”

Best he could do was a grunt, and her laughter against his temple would have been humiliating except she felt so damn good and he had been on edge all day, all case, teetering between horrors as his worlds kept colliding, and now he was blissfully sated.

“Give me a second,” he rasped, bumping his forehead to hers. Just enough space to breathe. And see the dark pools of her eyes. “And I’ll get—”

“You already got me,” she smiled. Her hands petted through his hair, practically holding up his head. Her eyes were sober despite the amusement in her words. “You already got me. You don’t have to work so hard now, Castle.”

He nodded inanely though he knew he was missing something. Something about Sophia? So much of this had been a way to contradict what hateful poison the traitor had left in her wake. (He had stared at her sightless eyes, the crumpled body still in her heels, power somehow undiminished even in death, the pure white, painful white of the walls. A body he had known—still knew—by hands, by mouth, by sight. And yet. What had he known? What could he have ever known? He told a good story. He immersed himself in fictions.)

Kate kissed him softly, pushing him to lie on his back beside her. His cock was a mess, flaccid and long between his legs. And yet she reached down and slowly cupped his balls, caressed the underside of his cock, fluids coating her hand. “Is this okay? I don’t want to hurt you. If it’s too much.”

“No,” he croaked. His heart was thumping a bit too hard, but no. God, no. He’d never tell her not to touch him. “It’s good.”

She kissed his chest. He’d tried to suck in his gut a few times, but he forgot, so caught up in her body he misremembered his own, but she seemed entranced by it. Her lips over his chest, the flesh that met his arm; she bit his bicep even as she petted his cock. 

“Kate,” he breathed. It just felt so good. His head was swimming. He’d been wound up too tight, and now it was all drifting. He couldn’t hang onto the edges of things, it was running through his fingers. Her hair against his chest and now her mouth at his sternum, his stomach, his navel.

“Let me,” she murmured, batted his hand away, palmed his thighs. Her knee pushed across his chest and spread her legs over his ribs, and he groaned at the sight. Spread and pink-assed and the wetness of them against his skin.

He palmed her ass, rubbing both cheeks just to feel the tension as she flexed to hold herself in position. She was catlike and kissing his thighs, his groin, licking the mess of his seed and her come from him.

And then her mouth was around his cock and he moaned, high and fluttering, as he slowly thickened against her tongue.

* * *

Feeling him start harden again—growing longer and thicker and heavier— _ in _ her mouth was possibly the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. Castle’s fingers dug into her ass, her thighs, gripping and releasing in fits and starts along with his stuttering breath. His biceps pressed against her calves and she pointed her toes, cradled the caps of his shoulders in the curves of her Achilles’. 

Kate vaguely felt her hips rocking against his chest, pelvis against pecs. She couldn’t stay still, couldn’t control the urge to press her body against his and just  _ move _ . To abrade every part of herself that she could with him until the sharp edges were finally blunted. Until she was safe enough to be handled. 

Her tongue swirled and Castle groaned. It vibrated through her thighs, her hips, her stomach. Her sex clenched in that needy wanton way, a hunger that never seemed fully satisfied when his hands were on her, and she felt him groan again. Felt it so deeply inside her chest that she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t coming from her. 

“Shit, Kate,” he ground out, voice thick with lust and some other thing she didn’t have the ability to suss out. Not with his cock growing hard under her hands and mouth and his fingers—oh _fuck_—spreading her open. “I can see you.” 

She had never really enjoyed this position for that exact reason. Being so exposed. So seen. But spreading herself across his chest, opening her body up to him, had come like second nature. She hadn’t even really thought about. Just moved. Trusted. 

Two curved fingers dipped inside of her. Kate gripped his shaft and moaned, rocked back on her knees. She laid her head on Castle’s thigh and inhaled sex. Perfect pressure against her front wall had white spots popping behind eyelids she couldn’t seem to hold open. He pumped, sinking and retracting, the pads of his fingers dragging hard against that spot that made her toes curl under and her nipples ache. Her body clenched around him and his hand clutched at her thigh. 

“I’ve felt you.” Her hips picked up pace along with his fingers, riding his chest. “I’ve tasted you.” A sobbing scream lodged in her throat when he crushed her clit against her pubic bone with his thumb. “But  _ seeing  _ you, Kate, being this close while I make you come—there’s never been anything sexier.” 

Teeth scraped over the back of her thigh. Her hand worked at him, sloppy and graceless, without rhythm. She held herself up on one elbow and mouthed at his inner thigh, licked the sweat and wet from his skin as he worked her higher and faster, his fingers noisy in her arousal. 

She tried to get out his name, tried to do something other than just writhe. It was impossible. A third finger joined and her body burned with the stretch. Castle made enough noise for both of them, a steady stream of grunts and moans and deep sighs. The rise and fall of his ribs rocked her; she rode the wave as best she could, nails scraping over whatever pieces of him she could reach. 

“Come on, Kate,” Castle cajoled, his breath hot across the backs of her thighs, between her legs. “You got this.”

She could feel it coming, her entire self pulling inward the way the ocean retreats from the shore before a tsunami. There was no stopping it, no preparing. All she could do was hold onto him and ride out the overwhelming wave. 

“Oh God.” Castle groaned from under her. His hips bucked and she tightened her hand around his cock, let him hump into her fist. “ _ Kate _ .” 

Kate sunk her teeth into the meat of his thigh and let out a feral cry, body shaking uncontrollably with the force of her orgasm. 

* * *

Having Kate Beckett limp and sated on top of his body in this position, weeping onto his chest with her arousal, was an ego trip of epic proportions. An achievement like no other. The satisfaction was nearly great enough to forget the bulging erection held carelessly by her fist, but she kept panting hot stuttering breaths over his groin while she came down from her high.

He wanted to  _ not _ come in her face while she was dazed. He’d been so grateful to his cock for its quick turnaround this time and now he wanted to throttle the thing for being entirely undisciplined. He was a forty year old man; this was atrocious.

He gripped her thighs, squeezing. “Beckett,” he croaked.

She roused, her lips brushing roughly along his shaft.

“Fuck,” he gasped.

“I got you now,” she breathed. A slow crawl down his body, and he had no fucking idea what she was doing, and her fingers were warm and twining around his cock, rubbing herself against him. “You ready?”

“What are you—”

And suddenly she was sinking down on him in reverse, riding him with short shallow strokes, her palms bruising his thighs. She turned her head, glancing at him over her shoulder, teeth in her bottom lip, and he nearly burst apart just at that fucking  _ look _ in her eyes. 

“Kate,” he moaned. His hips jerked; he clutched at her waist, tried to get in the game, tried to participate in this. “Kate, oh God.”

She rode him, chin at her shoulder to watch his face, and he couldn’t control a damn thing about it, whatever she might be seeing (too much emotion, he was so damn emotional over her and this day) and she was breathing hard and lifting and falling on his cock, a sweet hot vise around his cock,  _ fuck. _

“You gonna hold out on me now?” she murmured. Watching him over her shoulder. “What happened to coming the second you—”

“Shit,” he gasped. “Can’t go making jokes about that when I’m inside you.” His nostrils flared; the hard roll and sink of her body on his was intense. He was laid flat on his back and she was  _ riding _ him and he felt the motion of her hips under his his hands while her body contracted and tightened around him. “Oh God, you’re doing that on purpose.”

“Kegels?” So  _ innocent _ as it came out of her mouth, eyes wide as if this was new to her. Playing him. “Oh, Castle, remember? You have no idea.”

He grunted, but a flare of indignation shoved him upright, even as he crushed her back against his chest. He nipped at her neck and she fluttered around him, a little breathy moan, and that wasn’t a ploy. Goose bumps erupted over her skin. He palmed her breasts, kneading her flesh and swiping hard at her nipples. She shivered and her head dropped back to his shoulder, her mouth wet and warm against his jaw, open, breathing hard.

“That’s more like it,” he growled. Thrust up as best he could at this angle. Not nearly enough. He dug his heels into the mattress and bent his knees to pull them to the edge of the bed. When he put his feet to the floor, he tightened his hold on her torso, handfuls of her breasts, and thrust up hard inside her.

Kate whimpered, her legs falling open over the side of the bed. She bucked, squirmed as he sat his cock deeper. She scrambled at the mattress, trying to get leverage of her own, and then they found their rhythm. Hard, sharp thrusts. Fucking her, twisting her nipples in his hands, mauling her.

She cried out, tensing around him. He sank his face into the back of her hair, breathing hard, digging deep for this. He was so tapped out, had been, but he needed one more. One last explosive impossible—

Kate keened. He froze, astonished, and then felt her body contracting hard around him. “That’s it, that’s it,” he called, sucking at the nape of her neck, tasting her sweat as she mewled. He felt his own climax tightening its fist at his spine, the terrible fraught tension.

He had just enough to fuck her through the last of her orgasm before his own smashed into him like a sledge-hammer. 

At the end, they both slumped to the side. Kate nearly fell off her own bed but for the way his body happened to crush hers to the mattress. She moaned, a little shiver that transmitted to him, and he blindly reached for the covers.

He pulled the sheet up over them as exhaustion wrapped dark hands around his consciousness, suffocating.

* * *

Gentle fingers stroked across her forehead. Kate hummed and let her eyes flutter open. Blue light seeped through the curtains, the long night slowly giving way to morning. Castle sat at her hip, back in his rumpled clothes, hair flopping down over his forehead.

“Hey,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper and fingers still stroking her face. “I have to go. Alexis. But I didn't want—”

Didn't want her to wake up alone. 

He didn't have to finish. She knew. And she was grateful. 

She hadn't meant to fall asleep. Had intended to regain her composure after the intensity of their last connection and then gently usher him out. Because sex—fucking—was one thing but  _ sleeping  _ together...

Dangerous. Too goddamn dangerous.

But lying there last night, body limp and warm in his arms, her mind had finally gone quiet. All the anxiety and fear and doubt silenced. Kate honestly could not remember the last time she'd felt that blissful serenity that came with a calm mind. And so she'd slept, Castle's chest against her back, his soft, even breaths a white noise at her ear.

Kate nodded, blinked up at him. “Okay.”

She lifted onto her elbows but Castle stilled her with a soft two-finger touch at her shoulder. 

“Stay in bed.” He rubbed the already frizzy end of a lock of her hair between his fingers. “Try to get some more sleep. I'll let myself out.” 

She nodded dumbly again, didn't resist when he guided her back to her pillow with those same two fingers at her shoulder. She stared at him, saw the shadows under his eyes were deeper in the waning moonlight but the shadows  _ in _ them—those seemed to have lightened, retreated. 

Good. 

With a last swipe of his thumb down the line of her throat, Castle stood and headed for the door. The darkness of the unlit hallway had almost completely swallowed him when she sat up, slipped out of bed.

“Castle.”

He turned on a dime and her heart clenched. Kate walked naked across her bedroom, met him in the doorway. Hands braced on his waist, she pressed up onto her toes and dusted her lips across his jaw. She dropped back down to her heels. 

“‘Night,” Kate said, hands falling from him.

Castle caught one, brought the backs of her fingers to his lips for a whispering kiss. “Good morning, Kate.”

Their eyes met, held. 

And then he lowered her hand back to her thigh and turned away. 

Kate crawled into her bed, pulled the covers up over her nakedness. She heard the gentle click of the front door and closed her eyes. 


	9. Once Upon a Crime

_ **MARTHA** _

_Francis Bacon once wrote, “He who hath children hath given hostages to fortune.” Well, if I was a hostage, then my son Richard was my captor, my enslaver. ._

_ **CASTLE** _

_ Hey, I’m right here. _

_ **MARTHA** _

_ I turned down the role. Turned my back on fortune. And it was the best career move I ever made, for an even greater role came my way. A part, perhaps the greatest role that I have ever played. That of mother. _

_ **BECKETT** _

_ That’s sweet. _

_ **CASTLE** _

_ You’re right, that is sweet.  _

_ **MARTHA** _

_ Now, if Richard had only been able to embrace the role of son with the same level of commitment.  _

_ **CASTLE** _

_ And into the woods we go. _

* * *

He probably wasn’t supposed to be doing this. 

It wasn’t the arrangement they had made. At least not in that one sex-drenched, five sentence conversation on his couch, her body strung tight under him and his hips torqued back, ready to make her see stars. See it his way. Kate had agreed to their version of therapy, but only as the patient, the one who needed the brutality of bodies in motion because she couldn’t handle the quiet vulnerability of emotions. Words. 

She had never agreed to treat  _ him _ . 

And yet here he was. Having a pity party because his chest had been cracked open by his mother’s cavalier rewriting of his childhood. All those layers of protection and years of sublimation ripped away in the space of thirty painful minutes, sitting in his own living room. 

The only thing that had made it tolerable, that had let him keep that facade of good humor plastered across his face, had been her hand over his. Her fingers squeezing and smoothing almost mindlessly. Keeping him grounded and present and with  _ her _ . Kate. Not Beckett. Just Kate. 

He needed more of that tonight. More of her. 

Always more of her. 

So here he was, climbing her apartment stairs for another hit of her. She’d had dinner with his family and he had barely gotten the chance to touch her, let alone anything more, and he needed it. He needed the more. So sue him, he couldn’t even sleep without her soothing his battered ego. What a self-absorbed man-child he was.

And yet. Flames burned in his chest as he reached the landing for her floor, lungs fighting hard for air in the midst of his exertion. Castle leaned against the wall and tried to get his body back under control. Closed his eyes and breathed as steadily as he could until his heart rate came back from the red zone and his lungs filled without hitching. The last thing he needed to do was show up at her door in the middle of the night, red faced and panting, reminding her just how out of shape and doughy he actually was. 

Light seeped out from under her front door and he was a moth, drawn. But at the last second, a cold fist of hesitation seized him and Castle stood there, hand suspended halfway to her door. This wasn’t what they’d agreed to. He wasn’t supposed to be coming here because _ his _ heart was raw and aching.

But God, he just needed  _ her _ . 

Maybe it was pathetic. Maybe it was dumb and dangerous and asking too much of them both. But it was true. It was real. Castle needed her. The way she said his name, the way she looked at him, the way he felt like he was more than he had ever really thought himself capable of being before he met her. He needed her and most days he was pretty sure she needed him too, even if she wasn’t able to admit it yet. 

He knocked. Let his fist hit the door with a certainty he didn’t actually feel. And then he waited, wounded heart lodged in his throat. The knob turned and Castle let out the breath he’d been half-holding, shoulders coming down from their perch near his ears. 

Her smile stole his breath all over again. 

“Hey!” Kate waved him in without a pause, looking like barely more than a co-ed in her oversized t-shirt and capri leggings, hair in a messy bun. “Come in.” 

A bottle of red sat next to a half-drunk glass on the coffee table and when he turned around she was already in the kitchen getting a second glass, hips bumping against the counter as she pressed up onto her toes to reach the shelf. Castle simply stood there and watched, entranced. Hurting and aroused and wholly unsure of which to address first. 

“Come sit, Castle.” 

She bumped her shoulder into his as she passed, that new move of hers that he wasn’t entirely sure how to read. But he was helpless against the softness of her, had no other choice but to follow her to the couch. Castle dropped down on the middle cushion, hands fisted uselessly on the tops of his thighs as she poured wine for him, topped off her own glass. Kate sat down next to him, body angled toward his and one leg pulled up under herself like a bird. She smiled at him again, eyes champagne bright, and handed him his glass. Their rims clinked and he sipped, wincing against the burn of alcohol he didn’t really want. 

“Sorry it’s not something nicer,” Kate hummed, her own glass cradled against her chest. She propped her arm up on the back of the couch, used it as a kickstand for her head, temple resting on her knuckles. “Or stronger, based on the look on your face.” 

Castle laughed, a brittle thing that broke apart in his throat. “It’s fine. Thank you. I should probably try to limit my indulgences when drowning my sorrows,” he said, fingering the bowl of his glass. “Down that road lies madness.” 

“Don’t want to fall into the same trap as your namesake?”

“No one wants to die drunk and delirious in Baltimore, Beckett.” 

Her dry chuckle eased some of the pressure in his chest and he sank a little more comfortably into the couch. Into her. The line of her shin was pressed to his thigh and Castle could feel her bare toes tucked between his hip and the back of the couch. He wanted to reach out for her. To wrap his arms around her waist and pull until the full weight of her body was settled into his lap, solid and real, holding him down. Keeping him. 

“Is this how you felt?” He breathed the question in a rush, let those snakelike tendrils of anxiety that had been looping around his ribs for hours come slithering out. “When you read the first book? Like your whole life had been flayed open and put on display? Because if it is, Beckett, I’m sorry. I don’t—She just—” He scrubbed a hand over his face, dropped the wine he had no intention of drinking back on the coffee table. “My mother hurt my feelings. It’s childish but it’s true.” 

“It’s not childish.” 

Kate set her glass next to his. The long line of her neck glowed like marble in the low lamp light and Castle dug his fingers into his thigh to keep himself from reaching out, touching the silky soft skin there. He wished he could tell her how beautiful she was.

“It feels like it.” 

“Being hurt is a natural reaction, Castle.” Kate picked up his hand, fingers playing with his. “She said some things in her one-woman show that were less than ideal. About you. It was dramatic license but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.” 

He sighed, watched—and felt—her thumb bump along the line of his knuckles again and again. The rhythm of it soothed him. Lulled him. Made his heart thump more slowly and his lungs inhale more shallowly. 

“ _ Is _ it how you felt? Because I don’t want that, Kate. I don’t ever want that for you.” 

All he could hear was her breath. Soft and steady. Even. But the gentle minstrations of her fingers stopped, her hand arrested on top of his.

“Oh God, Kate, I—” 

“No,” she said, voice quiet but certain. “There’s a difference—Nikki Heat is fiction.” 

But she wasn’t. Not to him. She was Kate Beckett. Wrapped in a different name, a different tragedy, sure. But she  _ was _ Kate. 

“But—” Kate continued, her thumb scraping over knuckles again. A little rougher, a little less care. “—the parts of me that you did give her were good. Only good things. You made her stronger, better at her job. Less broken.” 

“Kate.” 

Her eyes met his then flicked away. 

“I wasn’t hurt by Nikki,” she said, letting go of his hand. 

Kate’s legs unfolded with grace he couldn’t fathom and then she was sliding into his lap, knees pressed against his hips. He could feel the heat of her sex even through their clothing. Castle watched the line of her throat as she swallowed thickly and looked down at him. Light fingers danced along his shoulders, up his neck. Into his hair. He ran his hands over her thighs and palmed her ass, rocked her pelvis into his. 

“You didn’t hurt my feelings, Castle,” she breathed, leaning in until her lips brushed against the corner of his mouth. He groaned. “You made me more.” Her tongue traced along the seam of his lips and he craned his neck, chased her mouth with his entire body. “No, I wasn’t  _ hurt _ ,” Kate repeated, both hands fisting in his hair, tilting his head back as she pressed up on her knees, rose over him. “I was turned on.” 

Her body crashed into his mouth first and Castle groaned, hands roaming over her ass and thighs. The worn hem of her shirt tickled the backs of his fingers and he slid underneath, skimmed up the length of her back. Kate attacked his mouth with sharp, fierce kisses that left starbursts behind his eyes. 

His fingertips bumped the wings of her shoulder blades and the lack of fabric made his hips buck. No bra. No barriers. Nothing between his skin and her breasts. Castle skimmed around the curve of her ribs and she let out a wavering little moan when he brushed the underside of her breasts. 

Kate broke from him with a growl. She reached down with both hands to grab the hem of her shirt and whipped it over her head. It knocked her bun askew, but she simply threw the shirt on the coffee table. 

He could only stare.

She skimmed her fingers through his hair and arched her body, guided his mouth to the taut, dusky peak of her left breast. Castle latched on and watched through his lashes as her head fell back and she panted, gooseflesh rising on her ribcage. 

Her body tilted and swayed, thighs flexing. Castle steadied her with his hands on her waist, leaned back until most of her weight was pressed against his torso. Fingertips slipped into the waistband of her leggings and she bucked. He slid an open hand over her ass, felt her muscles clench and release under his touch. 

He slipped down between her cheeks, into her sex; a volley of curses rained down on his head. Castle dragged his mouth to her other breast, latching onto her nipple just as he dipped into the silky heat of her arousal. Her hips pitched and rolled. Two fingers deep and his cock ached to replace them. 

Kate pushed his head away from her breasts, panting. She stared down at him, eyes dark and unreadable but he didn’t care. He didn’t need to read her eyes for this. Didn’t need to see the golden flecks in the jade to know that she was close. That she wanted this. Not when his fingers were inside her.

“Castle.” She let her forehead knock against his, breath coming in hot pants against his mouth. “ _ Castle _ .” 

He broke her open with a twist of his fingers, felt her orgasm dripping down his wrist as she shook against his chest, clutching fistfuls of his shirt. 

* * *

Kate shivered with the sensation of his fingers spreading wetly up her spine. She opened her eyes, discovered a hunger on his face that was so fierce it made her jolt.

He caught her, brought her back against him, mouth to her breast, sucking hard. She whined, clapping at his ears to twist away, strung out (just from his  _ fingers _ inside her and how humiliating was that?), but he was intent, unstoppable, and she was winding tightly again.

“Castle,” she gasped. She gripped his ears and yanked, and he popped off her breast with a thick sound. “How about we finish this up in bed?”

No answer but he rose to his feet with her, gripping tightly, a look in his eyes she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen. The hunger, yes, but it had an edge that wasn’t pure sex, wasn’t the aggression he’d shown her before, taking charge of things. It was… different.

He locked his arms under her ass and started in a shambling direction for her bedroom, his mouth burning over her skin, a ceaseless roving that made her clutch at him. He was carrying her through the living room in a heavy-footed shuffle, as if unable to give walking the attention it deserved. Instead, his mouth came to her neck, her collarbones, her breasts. The scar.

She jerked; she grabbed the back of his head. His teeth at the knot of flesh made her shudder; she had to squeeze her eyes shut. She wanted to say  _ no don’t _ but why, why, God, he should be allowed after all this—

It was too intimate. It was too much. 

She shoved on the back of his head to angle him away. His teeth scraped over her nipple, making her flinch so violently that he nearly dropped her. They both stuttered, Castle swaying for balance. And then he lurched forward and slammed her against the brick wall. Her teeth rattled, but her sex throbbed with the way his pants abraded her thighs. He’d missed the open bedroom doorway by a few inches, but all she could do was writhe against him. His body pressed hers wider. His shirt was silk against her breasts, rubbing, and his mouth came in to nip at her neck. 

“Castle.”

“I need you,” he growled. He bucked against her, crushing her to the hard brick; one of her legs dropped from his waist, her foot trying to find purchase even as he leaned in. “Want you.” His hand gripped her shoulder, too tight, pushing her against the brick, and his other clawed at her leggings. “Want so badly to be inside you.”

She growled and kissed what she could find, the thick adam’s apple, the scratch of five o’clock shadow, the blade of his nose. He buried his face in her chest as he dragged her leggings halfway down her thighs. She kicked her feet and peeled the leggings off, difficult to do with the way he single-mindedly went at her. 

His fingers dragged between her legs. She bucked and forgot what she was doing. A bright shiver as he stretched her, a move designed solely for his cock to follow. (Oh, God, his cock.) He had a forearm braced against her collarbone to pin her to the wall, and she was balanced on one arched foot, trembling.

He loosened his pants, zipper and button, and she reached in and helped him unveil his cock. And it deserved all that fanfare. Thick, velvety, and growing. She loved caressing him while he grew in her hand. 

“Fuck,” he muttered. His mouth returned to her neck, jaw scraping her ear and cheek, and his fingers pried her open, scissoring, to stretch her. She petted his cock, unable to get much of him, unable to control him, but knowing if she kept petting he would lose that ‘slow-and-steady’ and really fuck her. 

But before she had a chance to unravel him, he was pressing close with a desperate noise. He guided his cock between her spread thighs, his breath hot and fast at her temple. “Kate.” Like a plea.

She relaxed, let her other leg curve around his calf and cling to him. She caressed his cheek with her lips, urging him without words. He was already so far gone; she hadn’t realized just how needy he was right now.

Castle thrust inside her.

She cried out, coming off her toes, bones rattled against the wall. The rough scrape of brick at her back made her arch. He thrust and her elbow jostled the massive print of the woman running through a bombing raid.

Incendiary. As he pressed her against brick. As his cock hit her just right. That tightness and pain that melted into an expansive burn of pleasure.

She clawed at his back, doing the best she could to meet his thrusts. He breathed roughly, his forearm bruising her shoulder, his clothes scraping her breasts, the insides of her thighs, as the brick abraded her spine.

Castle began grunting with every slap of their hips. Her thigh trembled at his waist. She couldn’t get a deep enough breath. She felt battered, and she had a fist in his shirt just to hang on. Clinging.

Clinging to the desperation in him. Proof he needed her. Proof he wanted her despite his best interests—

Castle snarled, held himself still inside her, hard, deep. She clutched at him, tightening, making her body a fist around him.

He cried out—a curse of her name. And then his orgasm hit, triggering something inside her she couldn’t hold on to. Something that refused clinging.

Something that devastated. 

* * *

Castle sat in his boxers on the edge of her bed, clothes folded in a neat stack on the wingback chair and hands clasped between his knees. That ache—the one that had sent him running to her to begin with—still radiated out from the center of his chest. His shoulders hunched forward until his elbows hit his thighs. Eyes squeezed tight. 

He didn’t hear her come in. Didn’t feel her until she was sitting down next to him, hand extended. “Here. Drink this.” 

She’d brought him water. 

Castle took the glass and tried not to cry. He drank half of it in one long gulp, almost choked when Kate reached out and caught an errant drop of water with her thumb. She traced along the curve of his chin and Castle looked at her. Tried to smile. 

“Thank you.” 

She’d put her shirt back on during her disappearance. It hung off one shoulder and he wanted so badly to lean into her, bury his face in that soft, sweet-smelling cradle where her neck and collarbone met. To let the warmth of her body ground him, make him feel like himself again instead of an abandoned little boy. 

Kate’s fingers skimmed his jaw, down his throat. The tenderness in her touch made him ache. “Do you want to talk about this some more?”

He didn’t. He never wanted to talk about any of it. Not about his mommy issues or his daddy issues. Not about his fear that she would leave him because everyone he loved eventually left. Especially not that one. They weren’t even a  _ them _ . There was nothing for her to leave. He hoped and had ideas that maybe it might be more soon but— 

“Castle?” 

He shook his head, waved a hand around his temple. “Sorry. Too much going on right now.”

If anyone could get that, it had to be Kate. 

She nodded, thumb brushing the lobe of his ear. Her breast pressed against his bicep, the length of her thigh along his. “You need a distraction.” Her lips whispered against his shoulder and then she was gone. “Come on.” 

A hand extended in his direction. Kate looked down at him, her face open and soft. She’d pulled her hair down the rest of the way after the incident in the hall (he hadn’t meant to brutalize her up against the wall like that; he had just been overwhelmed by the need to be inside her, to feel her body moving against his because it was the only thing in the world that made sense) and it hung in loose, staticky waves around her face. Castle took her hand, guts churning when she laced their fingers. 

She pulled, he stood. She led, he followed.

Neither of them spoke as she guided them through the apartment. Down the hall, past the kitchen and the living room and the wine still sitting out on the coffee table. His heart lurched when they walked past the window where she kept her makeshift murderboard. He wanted to stop and open it. See what kind of progress she’d made. How many steps closer she was to another bullet, to being taken from them. From him. 

His fingers tightened around hers and he felt her bones shift. “Kate.” 

They stopped in front of a closet just off her dining room and Castle could feel the weight of that damn window bearing down on his back from ten feet away. 

Kate looked back at him over her shoulder, lips curling into a shy smile and his mouth went dry. His palm felt clammy when she released him, gripped the doorknob with one hand and braced the other one on the frame. The door came open with a sucking pop and his breath caught. 

“This is your dark room.” 

Kate gave a half shrug. “It’s actually a closet but—”

She stepped inside, flipped a light switch. A red light buzzed on, staining her pale skin. Castle followed her inside the cramped room, transfixed. A sharp tang of chemicals and solvents hung in the air, burned the inside of his nose, his lungs. Developed pictures hung on a string on one wall, artistic shots of the city, a few portraits, a lot of light and dark. 

“These are good,” Castle said, chest to her back in the tiny room. There was nowhere else for him to go. “You’ve got an eye.” 

Even in the red light he could see her blush. “It’s just a hobby. Won’t be winning any Pulitzers.” 

“Doesn’t mean you’re not good at it, Kate.” Castle reached around her. Her shoulder blade nestled into his chest and he tapped his nail to the edge of a photograph of the church where Ryan and Jenny had gotten married, the spire lit up in the blazing orange glow of the setting sun. “I bet Jenny would love to have a copy of this.” 

The heavy plastic trays where she processed the film into photographs were set up on a table under the string of pictures. Kate reached for a drawer under the worktop and he could see a slight shake in her fingers even in the strange dimness of the room. She pulled out a picture, offered it to him. 

“Maybe you want this one.” 

Castle wrapped an arm around her waist, curled his fingers into the fabric of her shirt, heart in his throat. The picture was of him in profile, his crow’s feet on prominent display as he smiled widely at whatever was just out of frame, a glass of champagne held aloft in salute. It wasn’t groundbreaking in its composition or award-winning for its subject matter but it was beautiful. 

Was this how she saw him? Because if it was— 

He took the photograph by the edge and she let him have it. “I would love to have this. If you’re sure.” 

Kate looked back at him, neck craning. The back of her head knocked against his shoulder when she nodded. Fingers skated up the side of his neck, into his hair. She scraped her nails over his scalp and Castle leaned into her, unable to stop himself. He kissed her hard, slicking everything he couldn’t say into her mouth on the tip of his tongue. Her soft moan reverberated down to his toes. 

“Want you.” Castle nipped at her bottom lip, gripped her waist with a force he knew would bruise. “Let me have you, Kate.” 

Her ass pressed back into the cradle of his hips, ground against his erection. “Yes.” 

She wasn’t answering the question he was really asking. He knew that. But for now— just for tonight— while he was so scraped raw and needy, aching— 

For tonight, he’d let himself pretend. 

* * *

Kate stood motionless as his mouth roamed her neck. His breath was warm and tickling as he dragged two fingers beneath the collar of her shirt and pulled it aside for his kiss. Her body felt heavy, long, as if she were growing roots in this spot, as if he made something inside her want to stretch in his sun.

His hands dropped to her hips, skimmed the shirt up her sides, a flourish along the incision scar that made her shudder. His pause was electric. “Does this still pull?”

She nodded. He tapped her elbows and she lifted her arms over her head, but her hip arched as the scar tightened. He dropped her shirt but his hands touched lightly at her back. Faintly, the tips of his fingers making a pattern.

She turned to look at him in the dull red bulb. He was all shadows, nothing of the man of light and laughter she’d caught in the photo. (She’d kept the other two for herself, the two of him, Before and After, when she’d zipped ahead of him on the sidewalk like she needed to outrun this thing. Before, when he’d been so bitterly disappointed to see her running, and After, when she’d made him think it had only been to frame him for her lens.)

“I didn’t mean to do this,” he said roughly. A twist in his mouth that made her turn around, catch his fingers, so thick and wide, dwarfing hands. He shook his head. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?” She remembered and arched her back, glanced behind her, but she couldn’t see a thing. “Oh, the brick. Castle, I’m constantly scraping my knuckles or arms on that damn wall. Forget it.”

He cupped her face in his trapped hands, mutinous eyes on hers, his forehead tilting to crash against her own. “I…”

Her throat pinched. “Please don’t,” she whispered. He wasn’t supposed to be this… down. He was the one who lightened her day, made her job not so difficult. And she was the one who couldn’t get her shit together. He wasn’t the one, this wasn’t him.

It was like she’d infected him. Like her trauma was a dark cloud.

“I can do it right,” he husked. His hands in her hair, angling her mouth to his before she could counter him. She didn’t mind at all if he needed to prove something, the way he took her mouth and stroked his tongue against hers. The way his body crowded her back to the counter until the small of her back hit the edge. “I’ll do this right.”

“It’s already so good,” she murmured, couldn’t help herself. His hand traveled a warm heavy path down her spine and she was coming up on her toes. He gripped behind her thigh and hiked her up as she jumped, and he settled her on top of the counter.

His lips painted her throat, trailing down. His hands rose to meet his kiss, cupping her breasts while he made devilish flirtations with her nipples. She sighed and scaled her fingernails up his ribs, gripped his arms, faintly astonished by the flex of his bicep under her fingers. 

He nudged her knees apart with his hips. She worked at his boxers and tried to get a look at his face, his eyes. She needed to know if he—

He pressed a finger between her legs and she moaned. His teeth nipped her jaw. “You’re very wet.”

He’d come inside of her. She’d never done that before him. Nothing about this was sane or smart. “Against the wall really does it for me.”

His words were nothing more than rumbling, and it wasn’t laughter, but she forged ahead. Caressed his thighs as she pushed his boxers down, anticipation flaring in her stomach. She couldn’t explain to him that she loved the recklessness of this, even the scrapes on her back and the sting of his touch as he kept fondling them. Like he needed proof. Or maybe he needed to be reminded.

She didn’t want reminders. “Come here,” she insisted, her voice closing up. She wanted this. The dark room and the dim red bulb and his body heavy and warm and so very hard for her. She stroked his cock and it jumped; she caressed the head and he whined.

Needy. He’d been needy tonight, more than she knew. That had been the look in his eyes, and maybe that was what she could offer him, maybe that was the good she could do.

“Come here,” she told him again, widening her knees and offering him space. He stepped forward and kissed her again, as if he couldn’t just take her, not without the build-up, the petting and stroking, the foreplay, the whole dance.

She would dance with him. She shifted her hips and angled his cock against her wetness, that shivery spark as he abraded all the best places. He hissed her name, she tilted her hips and braced herself with a hand. And lifted.

He thrust perfectly inside her. 

Their bodies were so close his skin was melded to hers. Overheated, sticky, warm. Her heart rate picked up; she bound her arms around his back and lifted into his rocking hips. Shallow, quick. He panted against her neck, holding onto her with one arm banded at her lower back, keeping her close. So close.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “You’re close already.”

She bit her lip and nodded inanely, her hair caught against his cheek and chin. He palmed her flank, dragged up her ribs to cup her breast. Squeezed. She grunted, rocking a little more urgently against him, and he seemed to catch on. 

He folded her leg up near her shoulder and pitched forward, driving her back. On her elbow, digging into the counter with her heel, she drove her body up to meet his thrusts. He bore down into her, bent in half over her body, his mouth ranging across her breasts. She gripped his neck in the crook of her elbow, nails digging into his shoulder, feeling it build. Inexorable. Taut.

She came with a little cry, her head falling back, as he ground his pubic bone into hers. Her legs spasmed, the orgasm twitching and sparking even after it should have been over, and yet he hadn’t come.

He pulled out of her. She rolled her head on her neck to watch him, but he was throttling the base of his cock to stall himself out. She sat up, tried hooking her leg around his to bring him back inside her, finish inside her, but his hands came to her waist, wide and thick and restraining, and he brought her down off the counter.

How could he be so level-headed about this when she just wanted him  _ inside _ her right now?

“Something soft,” he croaked. She looked up at him. He looked wild. Barely contained. “Not the counter.”

Her heart thumped. She jolted forward into him, her arms wrapping around his body, the sweat still warm. Her mouth against his ear, nudging her nose against him, breathing in the scent of his trembling. “Am I not soft enough for you?” she murmured.

“Not me,” he growled. A fury he seemed unable to hold back. “For  _ you _ , damn it.” And then a breath, a calming breath because he settled, stepped back. He scrubbed both hands down his face. “Want to do this with  _ pillows _ at least.”

She grinned. He looked adorable when he was furious with himself, so she had pity, and she took his hand, not his obviously-aching cock, and she led him back to her bedroom.

It didn’t take long. She had him on his back before he could demand anything else, her knees in the mattress at his hips, her body sheathing him once more. He groaned, eyes closing, and she dropped down onto his chest to rub herself against him. Licked his throat so he gasped and looked at her. She kissed him for that, the hazy blue disbelief, and she began fucking him.

It was all her own work really; the best he managed was kneading her breasts and staring up into her eyes as she dragged his cock against her front wall. She could come again, like this, she really could, watching everything he wouldn’t say blaze across his face with such sharp relief.

“Come on, Castle,” she goaded him. “Can you not come again for me? Or was it just once against the wall?”

He grunted and snapped his hips up, call and response. She grinned and took another kiss as he panted, knowing she was wearing him out. But he’d come to her already worn out, and he’d needed her. He had  _ needed _ her, and she’d forgotten he needed too.

“There it is,” she whispered against his open mouth. Licked the place she’d bitten earlier. “You got it now.” She pushed herself upright again, loving the way he watched her, absorbed by her. She reached back and fondled his balls and he cried out. “Don’t hold back, Castle. You need this too.”

She rolled his balls against his thigh and he bucked sharply. “Kate,” her name was a warning bit off by his teeth, and then he climaxed. A furious jolting orgasm. His wild thrusts toppled her down to his chest again, and she found herself wrapped in his limbs, bear-hugged as he thrust the last of it inside her.

He went limp, and she slid off his chest so he could breathe, watching the slow comeback of his senses. They were still tangled, his cock spent at her thigh, but his body was warm and malleable and strong.

“You okay?” Castle grunted. “Fuck. Shouldn’t just lie here...”

She shivered and squirmed in close enough for his heat to ward off the chill, and pressed her lips to his jaw. “If you can… you should. Lie here for a while.” A heartbeat of pure panic. “With me.”


	10. A Dance with Death

_ **Castle** _

_ So your dream was to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. _

_ **Beckett** _

_ Mmhmm. Yep. I was on my way to becoming the first female Chief Justice. _

_ **Castle** _

_ Wow. _

_ **Beckett** _

_ Mmhmm. _

_ **Castle** _

_ Not bad. _

* * *

Kate stood against the back of the elevator, the bag of Chinese food cradled against her chest. One of the plastic handles had broken giving her no choice but to baby it. In a way she was grateful for the catastrophic combination of thin plastic bags and overstuffed cartons. It gave her something to focus her attention on, kept her mind occupied. If she was thinking about keeping the egg drop soup from spilling, she didn’t have to think about what a potentially terrible idea this whole thing was. 

The elevator dinged and she jumped, sent a fortune cookie toppling to the ground. She stooped to grab it and chose to ignore the shake in her fingers. The plastic wrapper crinkled and she tossed it back into the bag, hopped over the lip of the elevator just as the doors started to slide closed. 

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She could taste it, the heavy tang of anxiety mixing with the darker, deeper notes of anticipation. Desire. It coated the inside of her mouth, her throat, made her want to —

She wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do. Not entirely. All she knew was that he’d left the precinct after they’d finished packing up the board, soft looks and talk of dreams still hanging in the air, and she hadn’t been ready to let it go yet. To let him go. 

So here she was. Standing in his hallway with a bag of Chinese take out. Terrified and hungry. 

Kate was still half a dozen steps away when the door of the loft swung open. She flinched, shoulder pressed against the wall, arms gripping the bag like a shield. 

“Detective Beckett, darling!” Martha swirled around her, a riot of color and noise, her hair tickling Kate’s nose when she pressed their cheeks together in greeting. “How wonderful! Richard will be delighted to see you.” Martha gripped her shoulders, pushed her toward the door. “He’s pouting in his office, dear. Go on in and cheer him up.” 

Kate looked back, caught a whiff of sweet, floral perfume. “I brought dinner,” she offered, her voice feeble to her own ears. She never knew quite how to handle being this close to the force of nature that was Castle’s mother. “There’s more than enough—” 

Deceptively strong hands pushed her through the door, into the loft. “A generous offer, dear, but I’m off for the evening. Perhaps next time. Have a lovely dinner, Detective!” 

And with that, Martha Rodgers was gone. 

The door closed and Kate stood in the foyer, windswept and dumbstruck. She shifted from one foot to the other, the bag of food warming her stomach and breasts. The loft was quiet, nothing but the ambient noise of appliances and electronics in the air. But tshe wished like hell she had just gone home. Because this— this was beyond stupid. 

“Beckett?”

Castle stood in the middle of his living room, an uncapped red pen in one hand. The sleeves of his button down had been rolled up, his forearms exposed, and the tails untucked from the waist of his jeans. Kate had to press her tongue hard against the back of her teeth at this slightly disheveled version of him, clench the muscles in her thighs. 

“I brought dinner,” she offered, lifting the bag a little. “Your mom let me in on her way out.” 

His eyes flicked over her shoulder to the door, then back. “She left?” 

Kate nodded. “She seemed in a hurry. Said she was out for the night.” 

The pen dropped to the coffee table and Castle shook his head. He skirted the couch and came toward her on bare feet, hand outstretched. “I’m sure she is.” The weight of his palm between her shoulder blades made her knees give a little. “She tends to hide immediately after having bamboozled someone.” 

Castle guided her to the kitchen bar like it was only right she was here. Kate dropped the bag on the counter and started unpacking cartons as he went to the cabinet. She slyly watched him pull out plates and napkins and the porcelain chopsticks he insisted on using because he swore it gave the food a superior flavor. It didn’t seem like he was going to ask _ why _ she was there and that was fine by Kate. It wasn’t like she had an answer anyway. 

“She bamboozled you?” 

Two plates slid across the counter and Kate started dishing out the food, making small piles of everything on each one. Beef and broccoli, Kung Pao chicken, Szechuan shrimp, spring rolls, fried rice, mapo tofu (for her; not Castle because he said it was like eating spicy pieces of sponge). She left the cartons open on the counter, a line of little soldiers, so they could go back for seconds, and put the soup next to his plate. 

“She sold me to Oona Marconi, is what she did,” Castle groused, handing her a glass of water as he slid onto the stool next to hers. “My own mother turning me out. Like she’s my pimp.” 

Her laugh was easy and light. It felt good, sitting here with him like this. Eating middling Chinese food and listening to him complain about whatever nonsense his mother had gotten him into. This was where she wanted to be tonight. Not home alone, torturing herself over things unsaid and cases unsolved and the way his face had looked that day in her hospital room when she’d asked him to leave— 

No. Not tonight. Tonight was for this. For him. 

“I’m sure it’s not that bad, drama queen.” 

Castle pointed at her with his chopsticks, a piece a shrimp caught between them. “You haven’t seen the fifteen pound manuscript I have to read and give notes on. That’s right, Beckett,” he waved the chopsticks in the direction of his office, “that thing is so massive I’m measuring it by _ weight _ not pages.” 

Kate caught his wrist, watched his eyes go narrow and dark when she leaned forward and wrapped her lips around his chopsticks. She slid off slowly, made a show of stealing his food. 

“Maybe,” she said around the shrimp, heat coiling low in her gut as he stared at her with suddenly stormy eyes, “it’s a masterpiece that just needs a little work. Some fine tuning.” 

“A diamond in the rough?”

“Exactly. A fifteen pound manuscript? It’s gotta be her dream, Castle.” Kate took a sip of water, tried to keep her voice steady. “I seem to remember you being a big proponent of making dreams come true.” 

_ Tell me your fantasies, Kate. _

He stared at her, swallowed. Kate smiled and tapped her chopsticks on his plate. 

“Eat your dinner, Castle. Before it gets cold.” 

For the first time in too long, she felt that old, familiar confidence coming back. They would sit here and eat. There would be time for the rest of it later. 

So much time. 

* * *

Rinsing the residue from a plate, lost in the rhythm of it, Rick Castle got a sudden jolt of sexual awareness.

All because her forearm had simply brushed the sensitive inside skin of his arm as she had reached for the dish. Such intense arousal for such a simple thing.

Now as he handed it over, she plucked up the dish towel to receive the slippery dinner plate. She gave him a smile of such tenderness that his heart pounded in his throat.

She bumped his hip as he stared at her, then she ducked her head and began to dry the plate. Another hip-check made him grunt, “What?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” she murmured. Her shoulders wriggled, like she was trying to rid herself of some sensation. “Keep washing. I’ll dry.”

“Okay.” Because what else could he say? He’d intended to rinse them off, load the dishwasher and let the machine do the work, not him. But here she was peering past his shoulder as if to check his washing up, be sure he did it right.

(That was Beckett, wanting to do it right.)

He couldn’t let go of the moment, didn’t want to release it. So he supposed he was going to wash all of these dishes by hand now. Her hair was loose, her feet were bare. She was still in her clothes from work, which meant she’d picked up Chinese on her way here, home, _ his _ home, and hadn’t stopped by her own place. 

It was so much like his stupid vivid fantasy from a few months ago that he didn’t dare go through with the rest of it: he didn’t playfully flick water in her face, he didn’t try for a joke. Not when it might jinx and ruin the whole thing. He was silent as he washed their meager dishes: the three utensils used to scoop entrees from their respective to-go cartons, two white plates, two glasses, two porcelain chopsticks. 

He wasn’t used to spare. Minimalism. He was used to loud, boisterous. Book or dinner parties that could drag into the morning, women (and men) hanging on and asking things of him, expecting a certain image. Wild rides to Atlantic City or Vegas, crazy times in hotel rooms after some conference or another. Country-wide book tours where the lines were long and the fans adoring. Even his family gatherings were made by choice as well as blood, riotously collected around a massive dining room table in an expensive loft far above the glittering city.

He was not used to simply _ two. _

She nudged under his arm to get him moving. A lift of her eyebrow. He nodded, rinsed the serving spoons, handed them over. She took them in the drying towel and knocked his elbow. “What’s up? You’re suspiciously quiet.”

“Just soaking it in.” The words were out before he could call them back.

Her lips canted into a crooked smile, teeth nipping one corner so that it gave the overall impression of shyness, insecurity, two words he would have never, in a thousand ride-alongs, ascribed to her.

He took a breath, marshalled his forces. “Why? Is that a problem?”

“No problem.” She dried the chopsticks and stepped to the side, opened the correct drawer to put them away. “Simply curious.” She closed the drawer and finally looked at him, the dish towel in the crook of her arm. “The many sides of Rick Castle.”

Warmth spread peculiarly in his throat, a strange burn at the back of his eyes. She’d seen more of him than anyone ever before. Even his mother didn’t—

“Hey. Castle? Are you really okay?”

He gave her a crooked grin of his own, knew it didn’t look right. But he couldn’t gather himself back together as quickly now. Around her. Not after… this.

Them.

“Yeah. Two plates, two glasses, you know?” How could she know? He didn’t sound right even to himself. He let the water drain from the sink to give himself time to find the path through the tangled mess. “Empty nest.” He shrugged and now managed to straighten his spine, give her a few moments of solid eye contact. The charm wouldn’t turn on, but maybe that was okay. “Alexis leaves and I’m… a dad without a kid.”

Kate’s head tilted. “You’re still her dad.”

“Yeah. But college is different. College is the beginning of the rest of her life. Away from me.” He held up both hands in defense, putting her off when she opened her mouth to deny. “And I know, I know; it’s supposed to go that way. I want her to live her own life, be her own person. But, ah,” he swallowed, “baby bird is leaving the nest.”

“Did you know that in many bird species, the parent begins taking the fluff and softness out of the nest? Some will even begin lining the nest with sharp objects.”

He wondered if she was talking about herself. Like he was lining his nest with her. “Sharp objects.”

She ran two fingers along the counter, seemed to realize it was a nervous gesture and stopped. “To make it uncomfortable. To encourage the baby birds to learn to fly.”

“I’d make a bad mama bird, then.” He scowled. “I want to clip her wings instead.”

“You don’t really.”

Castle sighed, heavy as he felt. “I don’t really. I just don’t want this to end.”

“I have a solution.” She studied him a moment, then turned without warning and reached for the handle to the wine fridge. She withdrew a bottle of red, and he chuckled at the triumphant look on her face as she held it up. “This won’t make you feel better, but it’ll be fun.”

“Well,_ fine _,” he said, as if put out. She looked so hopeful. He would never say no to her anyway, but that look made it impossible to try. She was already plucking open the cabinet and grabbing the stemware anyway, handing two glasses to him. The biggest ones he had. “Trying to get me drunk, Beckett?”

“Most decidedly.” She turned, working on uncorking the bottle with the handy tool he’d bought from one of those SkyMall magazines. She gave a triumphant cry when the cork popped, and he caught it before it could drop, both of them smiling now.

He held the glasses while she poured, a trickier prospect than he might have anticipated, her having to pour into a somewhat moving target as his hands were unsteady. She corked the bottle and took a glass from him, took his hand when it was empty. Like she knew.

Her fingers tried to lace between his own, difficult considering how wide his own were, and damn if that wasn’t the best feeling in the world.

“Come sit,” she said, already guiding him through the living room. “We’ll talk. I’ll cheer you up.” Past the couch now. Through the open shelved-doorway of his office.

They sank down to the leather couch beneath the window, bodies angled so knees touched, and she repositioned when he was settled, slid her bare foot between his thighs and hooked her toes at the back of his knee. It shouldn’t have been erotic, but it was, and he took a quick sip of wine to mask his growing need.

Her toes nudged the back of his knee. “It’s not the end. Not _ your _ end, Castle. There are beginnings to write as well... if you know a writer.”

* * *

His smile made her heart sing. 

“I _ do _ know a few of those.” His palm was warm against her thigh, thumb rubbing a half moon around her knee cap. “Some rather intimately.”

Kate rolled her eyes and his grin went a little lopsided, the way it always did when he was pleased with himself for getting to her. She hid her own smile behind her wine glass, limbs buzzing. “I don't wanna hear about your literary scene sexual exploits, Castle.”

“Who said anything about exploits, sexual or otherwise?” His fingers curled into the crease at the back of her knee and her toes flexed when he pressed against the tendons there. “Intimacy takes many forms, Beckett.” 

Like sitting on a couch together, stomachs and wine glasses full, limbs intertwined. 

“Sex_ is _one, of course,” he carried on, leaning over to set his wine on the floor. “A very enjoyable one. But not the most important.” 

“It’s not?” 

Castle shook his head. “No.” His hand smoothed down her shin and tugged, pulled her foot from the crook of his knee. He squeezed it between his hands, fingers working into the muscles. “Intellectual intimacy, being able to hold a conversation with someone, to know their mind and how it works— that’s where familiarity truly lies. For me, at least.” 

His thumbs dug into her heel and Kate swallowed something that might have been a sob, might have been a moan. Of course he wanted to know the minds of others, what made them tick. He’d been picking her apart, working his way into the recesses of her mind (and heart), since the day they’d met. 

“Makes sense,” she said, throat burning with wine and so much more. “Being a writer, wanting to know what makes people tick. It helps you be better at your job.” 

Castle hummed. “It helps you be better at yours too.” 

She pressed her heel into the meat of his thigh, grinned when he yelped. “I knew how to do my job just fine before you came along, Castle.” 

She had. Kate Beckett was a good cop. She was confident in that. She was dedicated and hardworking. Driven. Solving cases, getting closure for families and justice for victims, had been her purpose for years before she met him. 

But Montgomery had been right that day in his office: she hadn’t been having any fun before Castle showed up. Hadn’t been enjoying her job anymore. Her life. Everything was rote before Castle—black and white and boring as hell. He’d brought vibrancy back to her pallet and she would always be grateful to him for that. 

“I know you did. That’s what I mean.” He knuckled a knot high in her arch and her toes curled under from the sharp stab of painful pleasure. “You have that same need to know how a person’s mind works. A suspect’s. You get in there, figure out the why of it.” Castle watched his hands working over the muscles and tendons of her aching foot as he spoke, eyes never once lifting to hers. “You don’t accept anything at face value and you ask the questions other people would never even think to. You’re more than a good cop, Kate.” He fisted her toes, squeezed. “So much more.” 

Pressure built behind her ribs, a balloon of everything she hadn’t said—couldn’t say—inflating at the base of her throat. She flexed her ankle, pressed the ball of her foot into his palm until he turned. Until he looked at her, a storm rumbling in the blue of his eyes. 

“Thank you.” It wasn’t much. But it was all she had. 

Castle nodded, mouth bowing into a soft smile. He tapped on her knee and she unfolded her leg, gave him her other foot, let him work the tension out of the muscles with his strong, wide hands. 

A comfortable quiet enveloped them, only their twin breaths and the sound of his skin rasping over hers disturbing the air. Kate closed her eyes, let herself sink into it. The soft couch under her, the warmth of the wine in her stomach, the pressure of his fingers digging into her muscles. It pulled her in, pulled her under. 

For once, she didn’t try to fight it. 

“I would have thought you valued emotional intimacy the most.” She felt him freeze, hands arrested in mid-stroke along her foot. Kate didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t stop herself. “Based on how you’ve raised Alexis. And your emotional intelligence is so well developed. You can figure out a suspect’s motives but you can also connect with them. You empathize.” His hands started moving again, kneading her calves in turns. “You’re free with it. It’s enviable.” 

Castle cleared his throat and she jolted, eyes opening. Ambient city light seeped through the bay window, played across the lines of his face. The slope of his brow threw a shadow over his eyes and she wanted to reach out, tilt his chin up until she could see the blue again. 

“Emotional intimacy is important, I agree.” He paused and so did her breath. “Knowing someone’s heart—what it wants and needs—is as crucial as understanding their mind. It’s harder, though. Requires more work.” 

Kate nodded, the ends of her hair catching a little on her sweater. “It does.” 

“But it’s worth it. With the right people, it’s definitely worth it.” 

“The right people,” she repeated, hating the dumbness in her voice. “Yeah.” 

Castle hummed, head falling to rest on the back of the couch. He gazed at the ceiling, hands idle on her legs. “They’re all important, really. All forms of intimacy. Emotional, intellectual, sexual.” Kate heard him swallow, saw the mountain of his adam’s apple shift along his throat. “Ideally, you’d have all three.” 

The pad of her thumb caressed the bowl of her glass. “Triangles are the strongest shape.” 

Castle rolled his head to look at her. His chest rose and fell steadily but she still couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t read them through the shadows. “They are.”

Kate put her wine glass on the floor. She sat up straight, rolled her shoulders back. The floor was cool against the soles of her feet when she stood. Her legs felt loose and warm and she could feel her heart in her chest. Ribs expanding, she pulled in a deep breath. Held out her hand. 

Thick fingers laced with hers. Castle got to his feet when she tugged, taller than usual without her heels. She ran a hand over his chest, up his neck, felt the burn of his skin against her palm. Kate brushed her thumb over the fleshy pad of his earlobe and his eyelids fluttered. She leaned into him, pressed the length of her body against his until he fisted the back of her sweater with the hand that wasn’t still holding onto hers with a crushing grip. 

Her nails scraped across the back of his neck, the slightest pressure, and Castle tilted into her. She brushed her mouth against the corner of his, trailed the tip of her index finger over the bow of his bottom lip. 

Kate looked at him, finally met his eyes in the shadows. 

“Take me to bed, Castle.” 

* * *

He led her through the books and into his bedroom, his heart in his throat.

When he looked back at her over his shoulder, she only had eyes for him. It made his spine straighten as he met her, and it made his hands more confident, tugging on the body-warmed sweater, flirting the material above her hips. “I like this on you,” he murmured, watching the tease of skin as he played.

“I could say the same.” She curved her fingers at his wrists but didn’t stop him, merely played with the cuffs of his blue dress shirt (French blue, because she looked at him with such hunger when he wore this color). She hummed and flicked at the buttons of his cuffs. “Do you want help?”

He shook his head. “I want to undress you.”

A twitch of her lips, the shadows of his dark bedroom softening her face. “I meant with your own undressing, Castle.”

“Oh, yes, have at it.” He grinned and she rolled her eyes, but she was leaning in on her toes and touching a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

And there she stayed, as if held, and his hands on her bare stomach faltered as her breath washed over his lips. Then they were turning into each other, seeking, a touch and retreat, a more prolonged foray, the slight exploration of tongues.

“Rick,” she breathed. Kissed his bottom lip and swept across it, met his tongue again. He gripped her hips but felt himself swaying, overcome. The heat of her skin, the press of her mouth, the ache that coiled in his guts when she touched him, those light glances of fingertips inside his shirt, the breath that stuttered across his lips.

He nudged her back to the bed; she sat and pulled him with her. He pushed a knee to the mattress and scraped the bedding down, giving her space to scoot back, her heels digging in as she clutched his ears. How she dragged him with her, how she moaned when he had to lift away from her mouth to climb into his own bed.

With her.

“Take these off,” she said. Her own hands digging in the waistband, rough against the zipper. “I want to see you.”

“You see me plenty,” but he didn’t know why he was saying it. This felt momentous. To have her body framed by his headboard, her eyes mossy in the low light that came through his bedroom windows. “Get that sweater off and we’ll see.”

She growled some curse at him and pulled back, wrestled the sweater over her head. Immediately she went straight to her bra, twisting the clasp and ducking a shoulder, then flinging it to the floor. The unexpected revelation of her breasts was enough to arrest him, sitting between her already-spread thighs, and he couldn’t resist pitching forward and taking a nipple with his teeth.

She moaned sharply. Her body warm against his mouth made him dizzy. He had to plant a fist in the mattress to hold himself up, curling wet circles around her nipple, finding the fleshiest part of her to leave his teeth.

“God,” she gasped. The heel of her foot shoved at the waistband of his pants, gave her the perfect arch into him. “Too many pillows.”

He laughed and lifted his head. She was chucking them off the bed, arms spread wide, lying back and breathing so deeply that her breasts rose and fell in waves. He groaned and returned, palmed the cathedral of her ribs to travel down to her navel.

He finished the work of undressing her, pushing off the bed to get distance. Clarity. To push his own pants down and step out of them, to lean over her sprawled on his sheets and run his hands down her concavities, hook his fingers in her panties.

She lifted her hips. “Take these off me and get back in bed.”

He obeyed, but slowly. Couldn’t resist the long trail of thin navy cotton down her thighs and over the angled knees. Let his fingers play behind them, at the back of her calves, the soles of her feet as she lifted her legs for him. He kissed the inside of one knee and lowered her legs, made sure he put his hands on as much skin as possible.

She was playing with her breasts as he played with her. Lips parted, hair in a crown over the sheets, her face in soft neutral light. With her knees bent she opened her legs and dragged a hand down her stomach to rest over her sex. “Now your boxers.”

His pulse throbbing—throat, chest, cock—he pushed down his boxers and bent forward to drop them to the floor. When he straightened, she was running one finger through her spread folds, watching him.

Watching the bob of his erection in time to his heart.

He fisted his cock and her hips jerked. She twisted a nipple and bit back a moan, but she kept her eyes on him. He rubbed himself slowly, nowhere sensitive, wanting to prolong the agony, the pleasure.

He watched the glisten of her cream on her finger, the white pearl of it budding from her sex. “Push inside.”

She did, the work of extending her own finger into her flesh enough to hide her sex from his eyes. He came closer and sank down to the mattress, still slowly fisting his cock in his lap, and reached his free hand across her thigh to her sex. Poised on the edge of the bed, with her body splayed for him, he drifted his fingers over the back of her hand.

“Oh, more,” she whispered, hips rising to meet him. “Touch me.”

He scraped the blunt end of his nail over her clit and watched the bright red flush climb her body. Belly, breasts, neck. She arched, heels together nearly at her ass, hips working upward into his thumb’s insistent circles. “I like you like this the most.”

A mewling cry was her only response, a faint sheen of sweat across her breasts, breathing rapid. He slowed his pace, lightened his touch, giving her less, and less, and less.

Until she grabbed his wrist and rolled on her side, closing her thighs around his hand. Her cheekbone struck his knee; she was panting hard. “Give me—a second. Hang on.”

He waited, a growing unease, his thumb lost in her folds, fingers crushed between her thighs. 

She lifted her head, still gripping his wrist, rolled to her back. Pushed her legs down, thighs closed, but still laid out for him. “I want you inside me first.” A pink blush at her cheeks, but her eyes were steady on his. “I want to come with you.”

“Kate,” he choked. He shook off her grip, leaned in to touch his mouth to the hot flush of her cheek, a chaste gratefulness. She wound her arm around his neck and he came to lie with her, pressing his body into hers, their legs tangled together. Slow and seductive kisses, paying attention.

Too much gratitude, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help himself. Pouring himself out in every stroke of his tongue and shift of his body over hers, getting ready.

Momentous.

He pressed her thigh to the side. She angled her hips. Her fingers dug into his neck, holding his kiss against her open mouth. She was shaking, but then again, so was he.

Too much foreplay.

(Too much emotion.)

He balanced on a knee and elbow, rubbed himself against her breasts. She whimpered, her elbow digging into his shoulder, her other hand pressing between their bodies.

She closed her fingers around his cock and he half-collapsed, caught off guard by just how good it felt.

“Lift up,” she breathed. “Pull back. You’re almost—”

It was only instinct and lust that got him there, but once he was pushing inside her, it was all he could do not to thrust with a violence that shouldn’t be here. Not in this moment. Not with the way she trembled and clung to him.

Yet he sank inside her.

* * *

Oh God, it was perfect. 

_ He _ was perfect. 

The way he felt over her, inside her, holding her together and breaking her apart all at once. The heat of his skin pressed against hers, his breath on her neck and one hand drawing a line along her side, from hip to breast and back again. Kate whimpered, hand curling around the back of his neck. 

“Castle.”

He grunted, body strung tight and trembling. “Hang on. I need—just give me a second.” 

She smoothed her fingers through his hair, painted a trail of patient kisses across the side of his face. Castle shuddered and her body clenched, that dark urge for more rising up from the depths of her desire for him. She held it at bay, kept herself still and loose under him. There would be time for hard and fast and dangerous later. This—this was different. 

This was _ more _.

Burning heat pricked at the backs of her eyes and Kate closed them against the urge. She wouldn’t cry. Not now, not with the delicious hardness of Castle pressing her down into the impossible softness of his Egyptian cotton sheets. She turned her face into him, nose nestling into the hollow below his ear, and inhaled. Castle rocked into her and the pressure behind her eyes was obliterated by the pressure between her legs. 

“You good?” she hummed, mouth still at his neck. His pulse thumped hard and steady against her lips. “We can—” 

A sharp thrust stole the breath from her lungs. Castle rose over her on an elbow, a cool current of air flowing between their bodies and pulling up goose bumps along her torso. The hand trailing along her side crested her hip and skimmed down the length of her thigh. Fingertips hooked into the hollow behind her knee and Kate pointed her toes, let them scrape along the line of his calf as he hiked her leg up to rest at his waist. 

“I’m good.” A hard grind of his hips had her eyes rolling back and she felt the rumble of a laugh in his chest. “I am _ so _ much better than good.” 

The world came back into focus and all she saw was him. Castle. Bright blue eyes, the hard slope of his nose, a self-satisfied grin tilting at his lips. Kate lifted off the bed, arm hooked around his neck, bit the angle of his jaw. She flexed the muscles in her pelvis, tightened the fist of her body around his. Castle collapsed over her on a deep moan, hips jerking.

“Don’t be smug,” she admonished, tongue at the shell of his ear. She trailed a hand down his side, filled her palm with the ample cheek of his ass. “Not unless you can back it up.” 

Fingers combed through her hair, pushed it back from her face. He held her head in one hand, thumb brushing softly at the dip of her temple as he looked down at her. “That a challenge, Beckett?”

She gave him the smirk she knew he expected. “Maybe it is.” 

“I would have thought that by now you’d know _ exactly _—” teeth nipped at her bottom lip, hips grinding “—how good I am.” 

She did know. It kept her up at night, thoughts of him. Of them. How good it was when he touched her, kissed her, pressed himself against her. Into her. How he made her laugh, made her think, challenged her to be better. Made her want to be more. Nothing had ever been better. Nothing had ever even come close. This thing she had with him, what it was and what it could be, was—

It was everything. 

Kate craned into his kiss, flicked her tongue over his upper lip. “Remind me.” 

She felt his grin. “Gladly.” 

It wasn’t at all what she expected. There was no fury in his kiss, no hard thrust of his hips. Castle held her head in his palm, fingers curled around her skull, dragged his mouth slowly, softly, over hers. He licked and nipped and sucked at her lips, her tongue, ground his pelvis against hers in exquisite, erotic torture. 

Kate ran her fingers through his hair, scraped her nails across his scalp. She was on fire, every part of her body aflame, burning from the inside out for this. For him. She palmed his cheek and Castle turned into her touch, nipped at the thrumming pulse in her wrist. Open, wet lips trailed down her forearm and Kate sighed. 

Untangling from her hair, Castle skimmed the length of her neck, her collarbone, the cap of her shoulder. She arched into his touched when he skirted the contour of her breast, whined when he continued along the taut skin of her ribs, her waist. His thumb pressed into the crease where her hip met her raised thigh, fingers sinking into the curve of her ass. 

Kate let out a soft cry when Castle rocked them, pitching his body to the side until she rolled onto hers. They lay facing one another, her leg still nestled in the subtle dip of his waist. She gripped the back of his neck as he arched his torso away from her, one hand flat against the small of her back to keep her hips pressed against his. 

She tipped her pelvis, sliding back and then forward again, and watched him swallow, felt the way his thighs tensed. Kate played with the hair at the nape of his neck, twirled her fingers through the short strands there as they rocked into each other, a slow and deliberate pace that had her panting softly into the space between them. 

“Do you need more, Kate? Or has this sparked enough memories for you?” The breathlessness in his voice shot straight to her sex, made her clench around him. 

She always needed more of him. 

“I think—” Kate said, licking her lips, watching him mimic the move as his eyes traced her face. “I think one...last...push—” She ground her clit against the base of him, gave a little jerk of her hips for each word. “And I’ll have everything I need.” 

Castle growled something she couldn’t make out, hand flying up to grip her breast as he dove for her mouth. He twisted her nipple and slicked his tongue past her lips, undulating his hips until she was clinging to him, trembling. 

“Come for me, Kate,” he husked, voice cracking. “Need you to come for me.” 

She gripped his hair. “You too. Need you too.” 

Castle shook his head. “Later. You first.”

Kate leaned back just far enough to see his eyes, wild blue like a prairie sky. “Now who needs to be reminded?” His late evening stubble abraded her palm and she clenched tightly at the memory of it against her inner thighs. Castle whined. “I told you. I wanted to come with you inside me.” She dipped in to kiss him, couldn’t resist, met his eyes again. “I want to come _ with you _.” 

A low, deep _ fuck _ was the only warning she got before he was shoving a hand between their bodies, her breast abandoned. His thumb found her clit and she cried out, eyes still locked with his. Castle panted against her chin as she clenched and spasmed around him, his thumb rubbing tight circles around and around her clit. 

“Castle, please.” 

He followed her over with a rib shuddering groan, never breaking their stare. 

“_Kate_.” 

* * *

Castle woke cocooned, heavy warmth draining the motivation from his limbs.

For a moment, he only existed, there was no other sense of things, no awareness, and then her body stretched along his side and her knee shifted under the sheets.

She was naked and he was naked and the first of the morning light had leached color from the room. The sounds of early quiet were pierced only by an ambulance’s siren as it rounded the corner and then faded away.

She touched the back of his neck. He had somehow fallen asleep on his stomach, one hand crushed under his own hip, his face mashed into the pillow. She stroked his nape and brushed her lips to his cheek. “I had a call.” Her voice was as quiet as the room, a thing set apart, insulated. Her kiss touched his jaw. “You don’t have to go, but I’ll text you the address.”

“Go?” he finally queried. His voice was a broken affair.

She was humming, like a smile, when she drew away from him. He realized then that she was fully dressed, that she had laid beside him on the bed to wake him slowly. 

“Kate,” he rasped.

“There’s a body,” she said quietly. “And I don’t want to run into your daughter.”

Here. Right. His daughter, his mother. “Use my shower,” he offered. Though it sounded like a whine. He was still unable to make his body obey his commands; he was struggling for correct diction, accurate meaning. “You can—”

“I already did.” She ran her fingers through his hair, bent over him once more. Her lips to his eyebrow. “I’m going to smell like you at the crime scene.”

Oh God. “Text me,” he mumbled. Eyelids sliding shut.

She said something he didn’t catch, something about sleeping it off, and if he weren’t so thoroughly without energy, he might have been ashamed by how easily she got up and went while he was sacked out like an old man.

She scratched her nails through his scalp and stood. He watched her retreat, the black band of her shoulder holster like a flag before she shrugged on her jacket and disappeared through the doorway.

When he closed his eyes, he heard the burr of his phone with her incoming message, and he found the energy to move an arm and fumble at the dresser for it.

It was the address she’d promised to send.

_ Don’t feel you have to. I know I wore you out. But I wouldn’t say no to coffee later _.


	11. 47 Seconds

** _Martha_ **

_ She isn’t dead. _

** _Castle_ **

_ She might as well be.I really thought we could have a future together. You know, I was – I was willing to wait. Turns out it’s all just a big joke. She knew. This whole time, she remembered. And she didn’t say anything … because she was embarrassed because she doesn’t feel the same way. I’m such a fool. _

** _Martha_ **

_ Well c’mon. Let’s go home. Break out some of the good stuff, okay? _

** _Castle_ **

_ Well I’d love to. I’ve got to be getting back. _

** _Martha_ **

_ Back? Why on Earth would you go back, knowing how she feels, knowing that she lied to you – _

* * *

He was a fool. 

She was a liar. 

He was a fool and she was a liar. 

It wasn’t the outcome he had dreamed of for them but, in its own twisted and sick way, it was fitting. Made sense, right? For years, he’d been a fool where she was concerned. Following her like a pathetic puppy, begging for whatever table scraps of attention she deigned to bestow. Happy to just be in the same room, breathing the same air, until it could be time for more. For them. 

And she—she had been a liar for years. In deed, if not in word. _ To sin by silence. _ Leading him on with those hot looks from heavy-lidded eyes, and the insinuating banter, and the not so subtle innuendo. Giving him hope with the way her tongue cradled his name and how she smiled at him above the rim of the coffee he brought her and the slow but steady way she doled out pieces of herself. Her story, her history, her life. Her body.

Or so he’d thought. He could see it now for what it was. Placating. Pity. Pleasant distraction, at the best.

Castle tossed back his drink and let it burn, squinting his eyes against the darkness.

_ We had all these plans _. He remembered one of the newly-widowed saying that about her husband, blood smeared at her jaw, that vacant stare. All of those plans up in smoke. 

Castle knew how that felt.

Kate had looked at him with such regret at that moment; she’d had that wince to her eyes which he’d interpreted as _ I don’t want to wait for our plans to go up in smoke, _ when instead it had been _ I should come clean. _

He knew that _ now. _ Of course, hindsight being 20/20, he knew a lot more now than he had these last handful of months. All those times together, there really hadn’t _ been _ a together. Not like he’d wanted, not like he’d envisioned, daydreamed, _ pretended. _Pretend. It had all been an elaborate fantasy he’d concocted with what was, he admitted, a vivid imagination.

He’d needed it. Her. He’d needed her acerbic wit, her unerring moral compass, her inspiring badassery. In the beginning, he had needed the jolt of arousal and awareness that even now still came whenever their eyes met. Not to mention the standards she imposed, the expectations she demanded of him. She’d made him grow up, and he’d needed that.

Apparently, all she needed were his fresh eyes and crazy theories to jog loose clues in her cases; she needed a boost to her solve rate. 

And while that was most likely unkind, what she _ had _ needed from him was probably something more like comfort and routine and familiarity. He made her job easier, right? Made her job fun. She’d told him that, she liked having him around.

_ What if she isn’t ready? _ he had asked his mother. She’d said the words that haunted him still: _ Then she never will be, and you move on. _

Stringing him along because she couldn’t say to his face _ I’m not in this. _ When had Kate Beckett ever met an emotion head on? Ha. She couldn’t do it; she wasn’t wired for it. And him—

Delusional fool, that’s what he was. He’d gotten sucked into the precinct, deluding himself into thinking this high-stakes life was meant for him because he felt important and valuable, because he was doing something real for a change, something that mattered. Because he was her partner.

Hell. He’d pulled his daughter into it too. Alexis had seen too much, and Castle was the one who had opened up that life to her.

His whole family was affected; there was no good way to extricate himself, Mother, and Alexis from the Twelfth, and no good way to part from Detective Beckett.

He rubbed a hand at his jaw and swirled the alcohol in his glass. Stared into the distance. He was having trouble feeling _ nothing _, like he’d promised his mother he could, and damn if the alcohol helped at all.

_ Blind ambition _, that’s what they’d called the journalist’s actions. People had died. Was that all Rick Castle had to show for the last four years? Blind foolish idiot. It stuck in his craw and he couldn’t swallow it down.

It was a bomb of a different sort. His life blown to smithereens.

She’d _ fucked _ him, all the while knowing he was desperately in love with her. She remembered every second of trauma, of course she did, and she had _ still _ taken what she wanted regardless. She’d grasped him by his dumb foolish cock and led them here to this.

She’d _ fucked _him. She had fucked him up.

God damn it. She didn’t have the guts to say it out loud? _ You’re a good fuck, but that’s all you mean to me. _

That was what it came down to. He was a good lay (because he was fucking in _ love _with her). He was creative in bed and she’d needed the release, so why not keep him going with a little artifice? After that bout with PTSD, she’d needed the confidence boost his adoring could provide her. 

She’d needed him for a bit of personal therapy.

Well, he was tired of being someone else’s easy fix. He was fucking exhausted with it. 

Castle nudged the half-empty glass towards the edge.

It teetered.

And then he watched it shatter.

The shards twinkled in the ambient city light, hard and bright. 

He inched a bare foot towards the jagged base—

His phone jangled harshly, the incoming text tone that set his teeth on edge. He cursed the thing as he dug it from his back pocket, realized his fingers were more fumbling than he’d known.

It was from Kate.

_ Will you come over? _

And his whole heart leaned out for her. 

He _ wanted _her. 

Damn it. He ached for her. And that was foolish, right? That was dumb and stupid and he knew it was just a booty call, but he couldn’t help it. She had asked. She needed a good fuck, get her mind off the dead, and even though it was humiliating, he was so easily culled.

Fine.

She wanted a good fuck? She wanted something that would erase the blistered bodies, the violence, the sheer pointlessness of these murders? 

He could fucking give it to her. 

And then it would be _ over _.

* * *

  


Kate paced. 

She couldn’t stay still. Hadn’t been able to for days now, the anxiety of the bombing and the anticipation of the _ after _ swirling together inside her chest, keeping her awake. Keeping her moving. She hadn’t slept for what felt like a week and it clawed at the back of her eyes, the exhaustion threatening to pull her down if she stopped. 

So she wouldn’t. 

She couldn’t.

Not until this thing with Castle was made clear. Not until they’d finally finished the conversation she’d wanted to start but hadn’t had the words for. The one she was pretty sure he’d started and then inexplicably ended, dismissing it as ‘not important.’ But it was important. It was the most important, most vital conversation of her adult life. 

Which was why he had to be the one to start it, to find the words. She couldn’t. Words weren’t her strong suit. Feelings. No, Kate Beckett traded in facts. In logic. She established a timeline and followed it, started and the beginning and worked her way to the end. She was methodical and thorough and— 

Still more than her share of broken. 

Words weren’t her strong suit but they _ were _ his. And if he would just get them started, kick loose the ever shrinking rock that was holding back the boulder of her emotions, then the avalanche of her feelings would crush them both. It might kill her, the weight of it all, but oh god, what a way to go. 

Kate checked her phone again, the screen still cold and black. She thumbed at it, pulled up her call log, her messages app. Nothing. No response from him. Nothing in the hours since he’d left her at the precinct, her heart all buzzed and confused. 

No stupid message composed solely out of emojis for her to roll her eyes at while biting back a smile. No random text picture of an abandoned shoe on a street corner with a story underneath of how it came to be there and the owner who might be missing it. No emailed voice memo of some ridiculous idea he was just too overcome with excitement about to stop and type. 

Nothing. 

She pressed the heel of her palm to her chest, tried to ease the persistent ache that had taken up residence just behind her scar. The dead weight of the phone rested against her breast and Kate stopped. Stood still on shaky legs in the middle of her living room. 

He wasn’t coming. 

He wasn’t calling, he wasn’t texting. He wasn’t coming. 

Sharp pain arced down her ribs and Kate bent forward, arm curling around her waist and the phone still pressed to her chest. Tears pricked hot at the back of her throat. She shook her head and took a deep breath, forced herself upright. The muscles in her thighs shook as she took one step forward, then another and another. She kept walking until she’d reached the far end of her kitchen and turned, went back the other way. 

She had to keep moving. Could not stay still. 

Desperation built up inside her. Need. There was too much they’d left unsaid, too many half-truths told only in the way they looked at each other. The way his mouth took hers, the way her fingers skimmed through his hair, the way their naked bodies fit so perfectly together. It was too much work to keep denying it. To stay silent. 

She wasn’t ready. Not completely. Not in all the ways she wanted to be before they truly did this. 

But she didn’t want to put it off anymore. 

She couldn’t.

Kate thumbed at the phone and pulled up his contact. Hit send. The phone shook slightly when she brought it to her cheek, listened to the mechanical purr of the ring, her breath held as she waited for the click of an open line. For his voice. 

_ You’ve reached the voicemail of Richard Castle _ — 

She stabbed at the end call button, hissed when her thumbnail bent back. The phone buzzed against her palm, a banner with his name popping up in the middle of the screen, and she jumped, almost dropped it. 

Kate checked the text, heart hammering. 

_ There in five. _

She swallowed, dropped the phone on the couch. 

Five minutes. 

Five minutes until her entire world changed. 

* * *

Just sex.

That’s all it was to her, all it would ever be.

As Castle pushed his phone into the back pocket of his jeans, his heart was settling somewhere in his guts. He scrubbed both hands down his face, trying to liven it up. Trying not to look as abjectly miserable as he felt.

All it would ever be. Texts beckoning him to her place, that flash of searing loss even as he agreed and came slouching towards her offering.

Could he take it? That was the question he had to answer in the next five minutes. Could he survive this kind of existence with her. 

Because as much as the grief tried to suffocate that furious flame, there was still that molten core inside that burned at the thought of what she’d done to them. That threatened to turn this thing between them to ash. His whole being might get caught in that fire, and he didn’t know what happened to him, to this life he’d made and the good he’d done, when it was all based on a hope he now knew to be false.

What happened to him if he continued on like this, surface skimming, never going deeper, never getting access to what was real?

Hadn’t that been his problem when he met her? Nothing had been real. He had killed off Derrick Storm, but way too long after it had begun to ring hollow. He should’ve cut the cord on that one five books before. Would Nikki Heat suffer the same fate? Would she grow as tired and stale as Rick himself? With Storm, he had jumped the shark, emotionally speaking, so that nothing had really penetrated until Detective Beckett had walked into his book launch party.

And now, as he walked up the stairs toward her apartment, he didn’t have any answers.

The door opened at his knock. She _ glowed _ from within, a light that spilled through the entry and warmed his blood.

He stepped back, tried to check himself. That wasn’t glow for _ him _. That was the afterglow of a successful solve.

She frowned. “Castle? Are you… coming in?”

She wasn’t glowing for him. She wasn’t in love with him. That had been a story he had told himself, a fiction, and he needed to keep the cold hard reality ever before him if he was going to be able to walk away from this intact.

Survive. 

Because standing here before her, he knew without a doubt that he wasn’t going to tell her no. Rick Castle was incapable of telling her no. He would touch and he would taste and he would bring her whatever necessary stress relief and carnal pleasure she desired because she was Kate Beckett and he was in love with her.

But that didn’t mean he had to be stupid about this.

She smiled when he finally pushed past her and came inside. He heard the little breath she released and then the sound of the door fitting snug in its frame, the locks turning.

He spun on his heel and began unbuckling his belt. When she turned from the door, her jaw dropped. Her cheeks flushed prettily pink, her eyes going to black.

“What,” he said, lifting an eyebrow in challenge. Did she or did she not want this?

“I… was going to... “ She shook her head, glanced away, glanced back. Watched his hands move as he yanked his belt from his jeans. She shuddered, closed her eyes tightly. “Didn’t you want to talk to me? I had the feeling it was serious.”

“No,” he said gruffly. Approached her quickly while her eyes were still closed. She gasped and rocked into him when he grabbed for her; he had her wrists in one hand, squeezing hard, as he looped the belt around them. “It wasn’t as serious as this.”

She blinked up at him, her lips parting. “Ah…”

He tightened the belt roughly and she came up on her toes with a little breathless noise.

He turned her away from him. She mewled and twisted to look at him over her shoulder, her hair falling in waves around her face, giving her a beauty so exquisite it physically hurt him.

He pushed her forward, nudged her against the support wall in her entry. She grunted and her cheek pressed against the wood post, her lashes fluttering, shoulders rounding in.

Castle reached down and inched up her sweater, got his hand on the bare skin at her side, couldn’t help a brief caress of her stomach before he splayed his fingers below the waistband of her leggings.

She moaned. Her body was already shaking for him.

He stepped into her back and guided her bound hands to the support post. Looped the end of the belt around and closed her fingers around it. “You might want to hang on,” he murmured, lips at her ear. “Gonna be a rough ride.”

For both of them.

* * *

This wasn’t how she’d thought this would go. Not even close. She had imagined talking in low voices while hidden in the forgiving shadows of her couch. Tension filled minutes while she tried to explain herself to him. Tears. The soft press of his mouth against hers when he granted her absolution. 

She’d dreamt about it for months, long before she’d started crawling into her bed with the ghost of his hands and mouth skimming over her skin. How it would be when she finally found the courage to tell him the truth. To give voice to everything she’d been keeping locked up so tight for so long.

Never once had she imagined them here, her body pinned between his and the wooden post in the middle of her living room. Gripping his belt cinched around her wrists and the sharp points of teeth at the back of her neck. She should be embarrassed by how it turned her on, how wet just the pressure and heat from his body had made her. But Kate Beckett had long ago stopped being ashamed of the things Rick Castle stirred in her. There was no place for shame in this thing between them. There never had been. 

“Castle.” Her voice sounded alien to her own ears, high and thready. Needy. “Castle, I—” 

A stinging bite on the side of her neck stole the rest of her words. “No talking,” Castle growled, dragging his open mouth up to her ear. She shivered, felt her nipples go hard. “You of all people shouldn’t have any trouble with that, Beckett.” 

His hand covered her sex, middle finger slipping easily between the slick lips. Her ribs shifted when he used the full weight of his body to press her up against the post and she groaned. The palms of her hands burned where the rough wood cut into her skin and her elbows dug into her own ribs. Castle ground the heel of his hand against her pubic bone and her hips jerked. 

“You’re soaked.” 

She didn’t need him to tell her. She could feel it. Could _ hear _ it as he worked her open with two thick fingers. What he did to her. He hadn’t even kissed her, hadn't taken off a single piece of clothing, and she was already more aroused than she’d ever been for any other man. All Castle had to do was look at her and she—melted. For him. 

“Your body—” The pad of his middle finger swiped at her clit and she shuddered, forehead hitting the pole “—speaks for you. Tells the truth. This is what you want.” 

A thick finger pushed inside her and Kate whimpered. Her hips rocked into the cup of his palm, knees knocking together as she tried to find the right leverage. The tension on the belt released and Castle reached up to grab a fistful of her hair. He pulled and a deep groan crested the sudden arch of her throat. 

The tip of his tongue traced the shell of her ear. Kate whined, relished the burn in her scalp as she pulled against his hand, tried to turn her face into his. She wanted his mouth. That clever tongue slipping over hers, the delicious nibble of his teeth along her bottom lip. His breath filling up her chest, lungs expanding, pumping her body full of Castle-rich blood. 

“You’re going to come for me just like this.” His voice like sandpaper against her cheek. “I’m going to make you come.” 

“_Yes_,” she sighed, the muscles in her neck aching as she still craned for his kiss. “God, yes, Castle.” 

Needles of pain prickled across her scalp. Castle rolled her hair more tightly around his fist and gripped her sex, the pad of his finger pressing ruthlessly against her front wall. Kate whined, her knees turning to water. 

“No. Talking.” He reminded her, punctuating each word with a bite to her neck. “This stops if you can’t stay quiet. Understand?”

Kate nodded. Anything to keep him there, pressed against her and inside her, holding her up. Holding her together. They could talk later. After. This first then she’d take him into her bed and they could— 

A second finger pushed inside her and Kate’s mind whited out. Her body went slack, her weight borne by the twin pillars of the pole and Castle. He moved hard and fast, scraping over that perfect spongy place inside of her with every twisting pump of his fingers. The heel of his hand ground against her clit and Kate rocked into it, riding the delicious friction as sparks shot out from behind her belly button. 

“You get off on using me, Beckett? On taking what you need?” He licked a hot stripe up the side of her neck, bit the skin behind her ear. “I think you do. I think it makes you wet, thinking about getting off on my fingers like this. Riding my hand. Scream so loud you go hoarse.” 

The movement between her legs stopped. The grip on her hair went slack. Kate felt him move back, the humid warmth at her back suddenly replaced by a skin-prickling chill. Fingers closed over her shoulder. Kate turned, her muscles flexing and relaxing of their own accord to comply as Castle guided her around one hundred and eighty degrees, two fingers still buried inside her. 

The belt dangled against her thigh.

His palm flat against her sternum, he pushed her shoulder blades up against the post. The belt loosened from her wrists and she reached for him, curled her fingers into the front of his shirt. Castle resisted her pull and, hand still braced on her chest, nodded toward her hips. 

“Ride my hand, Beckett. Get yourself off on my fingers.” Their eyes met and her lungs hitched. “Make yourself come.” 

Her hips rocked without further instruction. Hands still fisting his shirt, Kate canted her pelvis toward him and back, slid herself up and down his fingers. Castle curled inside her and she moaned, head thumping hard against the wooden beam. Her feet slipped against the floor and she scrambled to hold herself up, to keep the perfect pressure of his hand between her legs. 

It was so good.

It was always_ so good_ between them. 

Kate ran a hand over his chest, her nails scraping noiselessly at the thick weave of his expensive button down. She hooked her thumb into the open collar of the shirt and skimmed the pads of her fingers over the thumping artery at the side of his neck. Castle stared down at the place where his hand disappeared into her pants, eyes unreadable in the shadows. 

“_Fuck_,” he hissed when she fluttered around him, milking his fingers with strong, intentional contractions. “Fuck, Beckett.” 

Her thumb brushed over the knob of his chin and Castle swayed toward her, his hand almost at the base of her throat. His eyelids flickered when she traced the pad of her thumb over the bow of his bottom lip. Kate contracted around him again, less intentional this time, and they released matching groans. 

The weight of him came against her slowly, in increments, until he was again pinning her against the beam, this time his chest pressed against hers and his heavy breaths painting the side of her face with heat. Kate turned into him, fingers splayed over his cheek, teetering on the edge. 

“Kiss me,” she breathed, her voice barely more than air. Castle hesitated, hovered just out of the reach of her craning neck. Kate dipped her thumb into the crease where his lips met, desperate. “Rick. Please.” 

His lips closed over hers, tongue hot and fingers curling around her neck, and Kate moaned. 

_ Yes _. Finally. 

A ragged growl rolled through Castle’s chest as he took her mouth in hard, hungry bites. His arm twisted between their bodies and the rough swipe of a thumb across her clit had stars exploding behind her eyes. 

Kate cried out and clung to him, let herself break apart under the assault of his lips and hands, the solid weight of him against her the only thing keeping all the pieces of her in place. 

* * *

Shit.

He had to get the fuck out of here. The back of his throat was tight, his eyes burned.

His fingers were soaked in her come, and try as he might, he couldn’t get her out of his system. Couldn’t grind out the love that sprung up like a filthy weed.

He was too much in love with her for this. It was going to kill him.

He withdrew his fingers from her tight cunt, made a fist (resisting the urge to smell her on his skin), and stepped back. 

She wilted, her knees giving way. He caught her because he wasn’t a bastard (no, just a jackass, a fool) and he pushed her by the hips toward the wooden pillar. Let go. She leaned back, her head tilted, throat exposed and gulping, those low mewling noises that had always let him know just how pleased she was with his performance.

She liked it rough. She liked to be commanded, jerked around, made to come. 

Apparently she hadn’t thought he had it in him, those first handful of times. He’d shown her.

He’d shown her he couldn’t be bullied any longer.

And what had he done? Mistaken the wild intensity of their sex as _ love _. How pathetic. How cheap and pathetic.

He bent down to snatch his belt, not wanting to leave it, not wanting to give her an invite to stalk over to his place for a repeat of this performance. No encores, not right now. He had to find a way to thicken his skin before that happened. 

She gave a funny little laugh and he glanced at her in time to see her knees give out and her body slide down the pillar, straight on her ass. She grinned and slanted a gaze his way, her leggings twisted, her hair in disarray, that faint gleam of sweat at her hairline. (He liked to taste the salt there at her temple, knowing she was hot for him, certain she was worked up _ just _ for him.)

To show he was far more nonchalant than he felt, he began threading his belt back through the loops. “That should hold you for a few days, right?”

She gave him a bewildered flash of something he used to call ‘Kate-insecurity’ but was actually Beckett’s best poker face: the anti-tell. 

“I have a trip this weekend,” he fabricated, nodding to the floor as he studied the careful buckling of his belt. “So it will have to.”

He couldn’t look at her. She was damn good at interrogation, getting what she wanted, and he’d mistaken _ so _ many cues. He’d thought of this seduction routine of hers as honest, not calculated to—

No. 

No, she was, and always would be, his friend.

He did her integrity a disservice, heaping his bitterness on her head. Clearly he was unable to compartmentalize, as she did, their episodes in bed. Fuck buddies was a real thing; hell, he’d done it himself time and again in those pre-Beckett days. He could get back there. He could. 

He would.

But he needed time. To sulk and nurse his wounds. To drink too much and party too hard and slide back into that role he’d created for himself after Meredith had cuckolded him. He needed a few days to get his shit together, and then he could come back here and do what needed doing.

Her. She needed doing. This was her chief source of stress relief, and while that had pumped up his ego (among other things) less than 24 hours ago, now it was constricting his chest and preventing a full breath.

“Castle?”

He realized he was staring down at her. As if memorizing her every impossibly perfect feature. Or mesmerizing himself to dull the grief.

She reached up, hands lifted.

He didn’t pull her to her feet (it was too damn dangerous, having her close. He’d caved to her plea for a kiss and he’d wanted so badly to keep himself separate, as she did during their sexual escapades). 

He stepped back and pushed his hands in his pockets to hide his pathetically thick erection. “Text you when I get back.” A jolt of inspiration struck as he moved for the door, and he gave her a wicked grin. “Be prepared, Beckett. I’ll have some new positions for you.”

The last he saw of her face was the confusion, and he knew he was running hot and cold.

But he just couldn’t stay in that apartment a second longer.

The moment he lunged down those stairs, the tears strangled his throat. He couldn’t have explained himself even if he’d wanted to.

He had no words.

_ Sinning by silence _. It wasn’t brave; it was cowardly.

When it came to her, he was the biggest coward.


	12. The Limey

_ **Beckett** _

_ Wow. Four dates in three days. You like her. _

_ **Castle** _

_ Yeah. Why. _

_ **Beckett** _

_ She just... she doesn’t seem like your type. _

_ **Castle** _

_ Well, she’s fun and uncomplicated. I think that’s what my life needs right now. _

_\---_

_ **Beckett (on phone)** _

_ Hi. It’s Kate. Do you still want to buy me that drink? _

  


* * *

Two bottles of a good red and Kate Beckett was uncomplicated. 

Or at least she’d convinced herself of it. 

She’d also convinced herself that the dozen steps from the hotel bar to the bank of shiny sliding elevator doors were a good idea. Or at least not a terrible one. Maybe even a _ fun _one. 

She could have some fun. Just like he was. 

It ran on a loop in the back of her wine buzzed brain. A ghostly echo, taunting her. _ Fun and uncomplicated _. 

Everything she wasn’t. 

Everything she hadn’t been since long before he’d hunched over her on that late spring afternoon, his heart pumping out love and hers pumping out life. 

But not tonight. Tonight she would be fun and uncomplicated. She already _ was _. She was loose and fuzzy with wine. Free. Free of worries and concerns and baggage. If he didn't want her anymore, didn't need her (didn't love her), fine. Let him have all the flighty blondes he wanted.

She'd have herself a Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard and call it a start. 

Hunt pressed a flat hand against Kate’s stomach and drew her body back against his as the elevator made the smooth climb up to his floor. His breath was hot against her skin, even through the material of her turtleneck. She let her head roll, joints loose with alcohol, and he took the move for the invitation it was, his teeth scraping over the exposed muscle behind her ear. Kate rocked back on her heels. Her ass pressed into the valley of Hunt’s groin and the hand against her stomach clenched, pulled her sweater into a pleated ball against his fist. 

The elevator slid to a stop and dinged. Before the doors had fully opened, Kate was stepping out into the hallway, the tails of her short trench coat fluttering around her thighs and a hand reaching back for Hunt. She didn’t bother to straighten her shirt. Her hair. There was no point. Hunt’s suite was only two doors down from the bank of elevators and they both knew what they were up here to do, whether or not the actual words had been spoken. Hunt fished the plastic key card out of his wallet and held it out to her. 

She hated herself for the way her fingers trembled when she took it. 

Two attempts later, the light on the lock turned green. Kate pushed on the handle and swung the door open. The latch had barely clicked before she had her jacket off and tossed over the arm of the couch. Hunt tossed his suit coat on top of hers and stepped up behind her again. Long, thin fingers plucked at the hem of her shirt, rucked the material up over her ribs. He palmed her breasts through the thin camisole she wore, the one she’d put on that morning with the idiotic hope that her day would end with a different man peeling off her turtleneck to reveal the pale pink silk shivering against her skin, the lace trimmed cups hugging her breasts. 

But it wasn’t him. It was never going to be him. Not anymore. She had to accept that. Had to accept it and move on. And Colin Hunt was a good way to start the process. Attractive with a sexy accent, and—most importantly—leaving both the country and her life in fewer than six hours. Perfect. 

Kate grabbed the bulk of the sweater and lifted, yanked it up and off. Hunt huffed out a laugh as her hair buffeted his face. His fingers curled around the delicate hem of the camisole and her heart jackrabbited against her ribs when he slid it up the plain of her abs. 

“No.” She turned around, head shaking. 

Hunt lifted his hands in a motion of surrender and took a step back. Kate stepped after him, curling her fingers around his wrists. She brought his hands back to her body, pressed herself up against him. 

“We don’t have to -” 

“I know,” she said, letting go of him and moving to work on the buttons of his shirt. Her eyes flicked up to meet his for half a second. “Just don’t take off my tank and we’re good.” 

She could feel his eyes on her as she worked, her wine-logged fingers not nearly as dextrous as normal. When she hit his belt Kate shifted focus. She worked her fingers into the thick leather, felt her stomach jump at the tinkling sound of the metal buckle going loose as she got it open. Hunt’s fingers curled into her ass and his body bowed to hers, mouth skimming along the line of her jaw.

Teeth nipped hard at the side of her neck and Kate hissed, her fingers curling into the hard line of Hunt’s abs. He pulled her closer, slid a leg between hers, pressed their bodies tightly together. A hand at the back of her head held her in place for the assault along her neck, her collarbone. She was going to end up with marks on her skin but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Not anymore. 

Everything about him—the size of him, the firmness of his muscles, the heat of his skin—felt somehow both foreign and familiar. She had to keep opening her eyes, reminding herself where she was. Who he was. 

Who he wasn’t. 

Kate rode the line of his thigh as she bit and licked her way across his chest, her hips jerky and hands restless. She pulled at Hunt’s clothes, a sudden wild urge to just _ do this _ overtaking her. Her hand found his cock through his jeans and Hunt growled against her skin, pulling up goosebumps. His hips pumped against her and Kate squeezed. 

She slid off his leg and the heels of her boots clicked against the marble floor. Kate took a step back, still massaging the sizable bulge of Hunt’s erection. He walked after her, hands gripping her ass and mouth moving up her throat. Hunt nipped along the line of her jaw, at the beauty mark on her cheek. 

His tongue, soft and bitter, touched the corner of her mouth and Kate spun them, hands pressing against his chest. She pushed and he fell backward, landed on the foot of the bed with a grunt. 

Propped up on his elbows, Hunt watched her slip off her boots and jeans, toss them toward the couch. Kate stood between his spread knees in her pink silk camisole and matching panties, two bottles of wine running through her veins. In one smooth movement, hands braced on his thighs, she sank to her knees. 

She needed to burn the taste of Richard Castle out of her mouth and this—this was the only way. 

* * *

Rick Castle knew how to please the ladies.

So when a couple efforts at, ahem, upward mobility didn’t work, Castle simply tugged Jacinda to the edge of the bed and crouched between the flight attendant’s splayed legs. She squealed, a sound he was beginning to relish for how unfettered and free it was, for how it signaled a soon-to-be fully-contented woman.

He hadn’t seen—or heard—a lot of that lately. Contentment just wasn’t Beckett’s watchword. She—

Well, he shouldn’t be thinking about what he couldn’t have. What he couldn’t ever _ please _ . Not when he could please this woman, any woman, so easily. Jacy was already in the throes of an ever higher-pitched bout of pleasure, fists clenching the bedspread, hips bucking, that _ ooh ooh ooh _ like a passenger train.

(She wasn’t a freight train kind of sex partner. Nothing about Jacinda made it all go crashing down. Nothing about it was like standing in a tunnel and knowing the intensity was going to smash into you hard and fast and fatal. Nothing about touching this woman was magic. It was just another woman. Another series of stimuli.)

She came and he sank back on his heels, letting out a breath. Wiping the back of his hand across his face. He flinched at the wet smear, had to lean hard against the mattress to leverage himself upright. Damn knees.

Jacinda pouted. Drew her thighs together and sat up on the bed. “Aren’t you gonna finish, Ricky?”

“I’m done in, Jacy.” He shook his head and sank down to the edge of the bed. A hotel room wasn’t sexy enough for him, maybe. Too sterile. “Jetlag.”

“But we didn’t fly international.” She thrust her chest out and leaned against his arm. Her fingers trailed up and down his thigh, teasing near his groin. “You don’t have to get it up. You can keep going down.” Her eyebrows wriggled. “And so can I. Long as you need.”

“I really am pretty wiped out.” He patted her knee. “Long day, emotional. You know.”

“About the detective? Yeah. I didn’t think I’d like her so much, but I really do. She’s gorgeous.”

“Because gorgeous equals likeability,” he said. Shook his head as he reached down for his boxers. She stood and stretched, posing for him again, but with an artifice Beckett never had.

Damn it. He had to gouge out every Beckett brain-worm, asap. This was getting ridiculous.

“Well, she’s drop dead gorgeous, like model gorgeous. You wanna invite her next time, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“I _ knew _ it,” he chortled, stumbling to his feet. His knees were killing him; Jacinda hadn’t been as forgiving about his old-man issues. “I knew you’d want her too.”

“_Too_,” Jacinda sighed. “You’re still stuck on her, aren’t you, Ricky?” She cooed and patted his cheek, pressed her lips against his. “You’ve got it bad.”

“No, I don’t,” he said reflexively. He managed to step into his boxers without crashing face-first to the floor, which felt like a major win right now. “Yeah, I do. Don’t I? Damn. I didn’t mean to… you know… fall flat.”

She winked and reached down to swipe at his boxer-clad balls. He yelped and she cackled, hooked her finger in the waistband. “When you’re not putting on such an act, you really can get hard, you know. You’re just too much in your own head.”

“Yeah, guess so,” he grunted. His cock was stirring, that was real enough. But when he thought about hoisting her up and pressing her against the wall, the cooing _ ooh ooh ooh _ put him off.

“Oh, boo, there it goes again.” She shook her head as if consoling, but it looked a bit condescending instead. She had made a lot of cracks about his age, her youthfulness, but she’d listened to him bitch and moan about Beckett, and then she’d fisted him until he’d come across her breasts in his fancy penthouse suite in Vegas.

It had felt so damn good to have that release, emotional and physical, that he’d hung on Jacinda for the rest of her layover, and then he’d followed her back to New York on the flight she’d been working. He had sneaked her into the lavatory and fingered her fast, and she’d jerked his cock a few times but they’d been interrupted by a knock on the flimsy plastic door.

He remembered how quickly his erection had subsided. How giddy the initial feeling of danger and taboo, and how it had faded to mere chagrin. How having her now in what she called her ‘crash pad’—a sad economy suite rented by the month among six other flight attendants—didn’t hold the same allure.

“You need to talk it out,” she said, tugging on her robe and tying the belt. Loosely. A clear invitation that suggested it was his own fault for not taking advantage. “Come on. I’ll pour you a stiff one instead.”

He chuckled at her humor and she smiled back over her shoulder, leading him to the mini bar. “When do the roommates arrive?”

“Oh, Geoffrey has a man in town; he’ll probably shack up there tonight. But Gloria, I haven’t checked her flight yet. If it wasn’t delayed, and it’s always delayed out of ATL, then could be as late as midnight.”

Rick heaved in a breath and sank down to the only armchair, which he knew from her tour of the suite had been, once, someone’s bed. All six of her crash pad buddies weren’t actually supposed to show up at the same time, but it had happened. “Beckett,” he sighed.

She giggled and knocked the glass against his cheek for him to take. He did and she sank into his lap, caressing his neck and cheek. “Yeah, Ricky, Beckett. _ Kate _. She’s delicious. Does she taste better than me?”

He grunted and turned his head. Downed a hot wash of gin. No tonic.

She laughed and nibbled at his ear. “It makes me hot to think about you fucking her and then turning to me—”

“Stop, don’t,” he croaked.

She leaned back, eyebrow raised, the happy-go-lucky gone from her face. 

“Sorry,” he said. His voice burned with alcohol. Shame.

“You don’t like to share. I get it. But you ever think maybe she doesn’t either?” She ran a hand up his thigh and his cock twitched.

He sucked in a breath and finished his drink. “Pour.”

“Uh-huh. Your funeral, Ricky.” She leaned out and plucked the bottle from the top of the mini bar, sank back into him. She twisted off the cap and poured him the rest, and he held it aloft.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she laughed.

If he got drunk enough, he’d forget that Kate Beckett didn’t share _ period _. Not her feelings, not her body, not her trauma, not her love.

Kate Beckett was, and always would be, singular.

And damn it, that was his biggest problem.

No one could compare.

* * *

It wasn’t the same. 

Kate crouched at the foot of the bed—knees spread wide and hair curtaining her face, a hand braced on Hunt’s thigh for leverage and the other fisted around his shaft—and tried to remind herself that different was the point. It was the entire reason she was in this hotel room, tipsy and sad and wearing lingerie meant for a man entirely _ different _ from the one whose cock was in her mouth. 

She swallowed against the overflow of saliva pooling at the base of her tongue and bobbed down, twisting her head to the left as she came back up. Hunt exhaled heavily through his nose and shifted his hips. Kate duplicated the move, waited for another sign of pleasure from the still mostly dressed man reclining across the bed. 

Nothing. 

Kate opened her eyes and looked up. Hunt’s chest heaved, his ribs stuttering on every fourth or fifth inhale. His hands fisted the bedding near his hips and the veins stood out along the arch of his extended neck, body clearly broadcasting the gratification he was unwilling or unable to vocalize. 

No deep sighs of her name or pleas for more. No mutterings about how good she was or how he wanted to touch her. Taste her, fuck her. No flirtatious teasing that would turn serious—too serious—in the blink of an eye until they were both left breathless by all the things they’d left unsaid between them for far too long. No subtext. No text. 

Nothing. 

Heat pricked at the backs of Kate’s eyes and she closed them again. Lost herself in the bobbing rhythm between Hunt’s spread thighs, their labored breaths the only sound in the too white hotel room. 

It was different but maybe it would be enough. Would be good. What she needed. 

(Not what she wanted.

She wanted to be in her own bed. With Castle. His hands stroking over her skin, his lips feathering promises against the base of her throat. His body a blanket around hers. His love a balm for her aching heart.

But what she wanted and what she needed were almost never the same thing. It was far past time to accept that.) 

Kate slid her free hand up her own thigh. Felt the almost completely dry fabric between her legs. Nudgining aside the elastic at the crease of her thigh, she slipped inside the pink silk of her panties, found her mark with years of practiced ease. She rubbed her clit with two fingers, pressing in as hard as she could. Being rough with herself. Trying to force her body to have the reaction she needed from it tonight. 

Three fingers. A slide down to collect what small amount of wetness she could and back up, her clit tingling from the abuse. She humped against her hand and bobbed her head in time, tried to coax her body into cooperating with her brain. 

(It seemed to have sided with her heart.) 

Opening her throat, Kate leaned in. She took Hunt’s cock as far as she could, her nose pressed into the abrasive nest of hair at his pubis, and swallowed against it, her tongue undulating against his shaft as her throat worked. A deep, guttural groan—so very close in pitch and length to the one she’d memorized over the last six months—poured out of his chest. With her eyes closed she could—she let herself imagine—

Her body reacted. Wetness pooled between her thighs, sticky and thick. Kate sat back on her heels, one hand in her underwear and the other still stroking Hunt’s cock. 

It was time to do this. Now or never.

“Condom.” 

Hunt lifted onto his elbows and looked at her with glassy, unfocused eyes. “Sorry?”

“Condom,” Kate repeated, letting go of his erection and standing up. “Do you have one?”

It was a hardstop without one. The last thing she needed was an STD or accidental pregnancy. Even in the state she was in, it wasn't close to being worth the risk.

(She and Castle had risked it a dozen different times. Because in the rare moments when Kate could be fully honest with herself, she knew it wasn't really all that much of a risk. That any accident they might have had, any mistake, wouldn’t have been. They would have made it through eventually. All of them.)

“Oh. Yeah.” Hunt tried to press himself up but Kate stayed him with one hand. “In my wash bag. Front zip of the suitcase.” 

The suitcase waited next to the couch, a silent observer. Kate unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a small bag of toiletries. She rifled through the miniature soap and toothpaste and shampoo until her fingers closed around the familiar shape of a condom wrapped in plastic. Kate put everything back in place, condom fisted tightly in her hand. 

She found Hunt exactly where she’d left him on the bed, shirt unbuttoned and hanging open and pants pulled down around his thighs, still-booted feet planted on the floor. He watched her cross the shadowed room, lit only by the meager light falling through the open curtains. 

Kate came to a stop, once again between his spread knees. She tore open the condom wrapper and then tossed it to him. Neither of them spoke while Hunt rolled the condom down over himself. He checked the fit and gave himself a stroke, looking up at Kate with a nod. 

The bedspread felt cool against her knees. 

Kate straddled Hunt’s hips. His fingertips grazed her thighs as she held herself over him. Kate reached between her legs and gripped the base of his cock in one hand. With the other, she pulled the crotch of her panties to one side. 

On a quivering breath, Kate aligned their bodies. 

Started to sink. 

  


* * *

“You’re gonna have to go now, Ricky.” Jacinda scratched a boxer-clad ass cheek with her manicured nails, a sensation distinctly unpleasant. “I need to shower and make my flight.”

“What time’s it?” he grumbled.

“Three.”

“In the _ morning _,” he gasped.

“Six o’clock flight, five o’clock call. Come on, up and at ‘em, Ricky.”

God, she sounded disturbingly like his mother. “I’m up.”

She giggled, and he knew exactly what she was laughing about, and he couldn’t help laughing himself. He didn’t feel better about Beckett, not in any way, but there were always women around. Women who understood and soothed, women who just wanted a good time with a guy who had the money and manners to provide it. Women who breezed in and breezed out just as fast. 

Women he had left far behind him when he’d joined the Twelfth precinct as a nominal team member and partner. And _ why _ ? Trying to make himself over into something he wasn’t just because Beckett snootily said she was a _ one and done _ kind of girl. Ha. That wasn’t the real world. 

Jacinda was the real world.

Oh, fuck, Jacinda was the real world.

He groaned into his pillow and tried not to be so unkind. Because Jacy had been _ so _ kind and eager and willing to get along, even when he’d pulled stunts like have her drive his Ferrari from the crime scene… or have his cock wilt the second he’d felt her nails in his back and her groin pressed against his.

Yeah, that had been a shit move on his part. 

He rolled over and sat up, saw her just inside the bathroom, checking out the bags under her eyes. “Hey. Jacy. Want one for the road?”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder, her hair a shining coil of platinum. “Ricky,” she sighed. “No offense, but I don’t really have time to coax it.”

Ah. 

He nodded and waved a desultory hand towards his crotch. “We understand.”

She giggled and moved for the shower, crudely naked. Gloria and Geoffrey, neither of them, had made it in last night. Geoff had texted a graphic photo of aroused cocks which had been interesting and alluring, but in the end, hadn’t made much difference to Rick’s own, though he’d had fun teasing and giggling with Jacy. _ Like a girls’ sleepover _, she’d said at one point, sending his mood plummeting once more.

Mood? Who was he kidding here. His dick. His weak unwilling dick. Plummeting. Sinking. Wilting. All those despairing words. He hadn’t gotten it up all night, and though he knew the alcohol hadn’t helped, the copious amounts of alcohol, he’d never had that kind of an issue with Kate.

Beckett.

He had to be very firm about that. (No, not _ that _ .) She was Beckett. Detective Beckett. She was not, nor had she ever really been, _ Kate _. That was a fantasy he’d created to tell himself a better story, but this wasn’t fiction. This was real life.

This depressing economy suite was real life.

Rick was _ not _ letting it go on this way. He summoned every last nerve, every ounce of conviction, and he got to his feet with his cock in hand, stroking roughly to _ prove _—

“Ricky?” The door popped open. Jacinda’s wet head popped out. “Grab me a towel. I’m almost done. Do you want to jump in after me?” Her eyes shot down to where he was molesting himself. “Oh, _ honestly. _” She waved a hand at him. “Get in here. What a determined stubborn ass of a man you are.”

His cheeks flushed but he snagged a couple of towels to lay by the door before he hopped into the shower with her. She rolled her eyes and raked those nails across his stomach, reached in to handle him. 

He hissed in a breath at her rough treatment, and he felt that stir of _ what’s this _? which meant his cock was coming around. 

“There we go, all right now. Kinda crunched for time here, Ricky, so if it starts to chafe, we can stop and—” She chuckled when _ chafing _ elicited the response they’d both been going for all night. “Who knew it was rough play you liked so much?” 

It wasn’t rough play. Not exactly, It was that he’d been triggered with the memory of Kate pressing him back to the tile of her shower with her fingers pinching his balls as she’d whispered _ don’t you dare come _ and of course he had the second, they very fucking second, she’d demanded things of him.

“Mm,” she said. Her lips brushed his chest. Thighs widening over his, slotting awkwardly over his knee. “Touch me too. Don’t forget me.”

His eyes flared open and he saw the top of Jacinda’s bowed head as she bent to her work. Her hands milked his cock and scratched his balls and the water from the shower dripped and spattered between them.

His abs went taut.

There was no fumbling when he reached between her legs—he’d been doing that move all night, he was well-practised—but it took a few swipes to get her wet enough for that easy slow glide of his fingers.

His erection was so stiff now that there was no question of his coming, but he found himself tilting his head back and writing a different story.

The story of Kate sinking to her knees and putting her mouth around him in that way she had, that slow sensuous tease where he was weak-kneed and babbling by the time her nose was buried in his groin. _ I always know exactly how far gone you are _, she’d told him one night. He’d been hoarse and broken-voiced from coming in her mouth. She’d been fingering herself and waiting for his recovery.

He’d dragged her off her knees and thrust two fingers inside her and quickly made her just as far gone.

“That’s it, Ricky. Ooh ooh ooh—”

Thankfully he was already jacking off in her hand by the time her orgasm noises spiraled out of control. His sperm painted the tile and was quickly washed down the drain as if nothing had happened.

He felt sick as he faced the shower spray. Jacinda was already stepping out and trilling a pleased _ thank you _ as she grabbed one of the towels he’d left. The burn in his eyes was quickly washed out by the pounding water, and it took only a few minutes to wash up, soaping around his testicles with care, as if handling damaged goods.

He finished washing and shut off the water, got out. Jacinda was half-naked and leaning into the sink as she put on mascara. She said something to him about hurrying up, and he must have responded but he barely took note of the exchange.

He pulled on his clothes from last night, straightened his cuffs but left the shirt untucked. He sat down on the edge of the unmade bed to put on socks and shoes; Jacinda barely spoke to him as she went about her morning ablutions. Quick, confident, practised, breezy. She smiled when he stood up and cleared his throat and said _ I should be going. _

She waved with three fingers and turned back to the bathroom mirror with the curling iron. _ I have your number; I’ll text when I’m in town. _

He stepped out of the economy suite and took a deep breath. Tried to cleanse his lungs of the scent of woman and sex and sweat. All the wrong smells, and yet they should have been the makings of a perfect night.

He blew out his breath and trudged down the hallway. Elevators were something of a hike from the crash pad Jacinda rented by the month, and when he finally got to the bank, he stabbed his thumb at the call button with more force than required.

He checked his back pocket, but no, no, that wasn’t a text alert. He fished out his phone anyway and had to look (why did he think Beckett would be texting him _ at all?). _ Nothing since last night, when Alexis had texted _ don’t do anything stupid _ to his _ I’ll see you tomorrow morning, pumpkin. _

The elevator to the right dinged to let him know it was picking him up. He shifted on his feet to face the elevator, heard the doors open.

He lifted his head and his heart stopped beating.

“Castle,” she gasped.

Kate Beckett stood in the hotel elevator with last night’s work clothes rumpled on her thin frame.

He stared.

The elevator doors chugged and began to close, and for some fucking stupid reason, he jerked forward and inside before it could leave without him.

Beckett didn’t move.

He sank into one corner, Kate in the other, and nothing at all came to mind. He was quickly losing all dignity and self-worth, if he’d even had claim to those two precious commodities to begin with, and he should have let the elevator go.

He shouldn’t have gotten on.

He risked a look her way and saw all the same clues she probably saw on him: untucked shirt, hair spiky with a shower but no product, accessories in pockets, tightness around the eyes from a sleepless night.

She looked like he felt.

He had to stop looking.

But as he stood there, eyes averted, the tightness in his throat telling on him, his ragged breaths brought her scent to him.

The scent that had been missing from the bed this morning, the scent he hadn’t quite realized could be so damn intoxicating.

The scent of her sex.

His cock tented painfully in his pants, as if a dog called by its master.

* * *

She was going to vomit. 

Kate wrapped her arms around her midsection and swallowed hard against it, fighting the shrinking cramp of her stomach and sudden flood of saliva at the back of her throat. She pulled a deep breath through her nose and instantly regretted it. 

She could smell it. 

_ Them_. 

Castle and the stewardess. 

The sickly sweet scent of hotel sheets washed in bulk, the sharp burn of alcohol. A musky haze of flowery perfume that wafted off of his clothes and his skin in waves so heavy she could almost see the air thickening on his side of the car. 

How? How could this possibly have happened? Thousands of hotels in the city and they somehow both ended up here. Sharing an elevator ride down into a walk of shame (regret) at three in the morning. 

Although Castle probably wasn’t the least bit ashamed, was he? Not with the way he’d been parading Jacinda around for the last seventy-two hours. Blazing up to crime scenes in his sports car in the middle of the night, letting her paw at the case, dragging his hands over her ass for the entire bullpen to see while they waited for the elevator. No, Castle wasn’t doing a walk of shame here. He was proud of himself. Of what he’d done. 

(Of how he’d broken them. 

Broken her.) 

But Kate... she was. Ashamed. So very deeply ashamed. 

The elevator juttered to a halt on the ground floor and Kate’s stomach did another sloshy pirouette. She moved for the doors before they were even half open, her heels, the tall black ones she put on that morning—yesterday morning—because they made her feel powerful, confident— clattering too loudly against the tile floor of the hotel lobby. 

A flame burned in the middle of her chest, fueled by alcohol and all the petty, angry, bitter words she’d been swallowing for three days. It charred her esophagus, blistered the back of her tongue as she turned to look over her shoulder, opened her mouth. 

“I think a twenty-something stewardess might be a little too much for you, Castle. You look like hell.” 

She looked at Castle just long enough to watch her words hit their mark, to watch his eyes widen and his head rock back. Then she turned away and headed for the sliding glass lobby doors, trying like hell to not think about the look on his face. 

It’d been mean. Kate knew that. She hated herself for saying it. But right now, she hated him more for turning her into the kind of angry, bitter, lovesick person who would. 

She needed to get herself home. 

That’s all she wanted. To get home and get out of her clothes and into a scalding hot shower. To burn the night—the wine and self-pity and the aborted attempt at sex with a near-stranger—out of her mind. Off of her skin. 

Fingers, strong and hot, clamped around her upper arm, jerking her off balance. Kate let out a startled yip. 

“Don’t make a fucking scene, Beckett,” Castle growled at her ear, steering her away from the lobby and toward a short hallway off the bank of elevators. “The last thing I need is for the goddamn front desk to think I’m assaulting you.” 

“Aren’t you?” She could feel the pads of all five of his fingers pressing hard against her bicep. So hard that she knew he knew he was leaving a mark. Kate planted her heel and tried to break the grip, tried to spin herself around, but her body wouldn’t cooperate, the sudden dump of adrenaline crashing her already overloaded her system. 

Castle didn’t answer. Just stomped down the carpeted hall, dragging her by the arm. Red warning lights flashed inside her head but she was too weary, too strung out to heed them. All she could do was let him. 

Let him reverse their roles. Like he was so good at doing.

Castle slammed his shoulder into a door on the right side of the hall. He thrust Kate over the threshold, releasing her to push the door shut and flip the lock. She stood dumbly in the middle of a one-room family bathroom, rubbing at the tingling muscle fibers in her bicep. 

Castle stood with his back to the room. To her. Pitched forward at the waist, palms flat against either side of the door frame. The pose pulled the fabric of his dress shirt taut over his shoulders and Kate felt her abs tremble at the memory of running her hands over him, feeling those muscles flex and pull as he drove into her. The power of him had left her awed. Every single time.

“Castle—”

“Was it good?”

His eyes were ice when he pushed off the door, spun around to face her. Kate sucked in a breath, took a half-step back. 

“Answer me, Beckett,” Castle hissed, hands balled against his thighs. “Fucking Hunt. Was it good?”

Good?

No. 

It had been a disaster.

Straddling Hunt, his condom-sheathed erection in her hand, Kate had had every intention of fucking him. Of riding him until the spell Rick Castle had cast on her four years ago was broken. Or at least until they both came. 

But she hadn't been able to do it. 

Hips tilted and thighs quivering, she'd stalled out. Climbed off him and buried her head in her shaking hands. Then the tears she'd been swallowing back for three days came and she'd spent the next hour curled into the corner of Hunt’s rented couch, recounting for him the fucked up fairy tale of Castle and Beckett. 

Hunt had let her cry and talk and batted away any apology she’d offered. He’d left to catch his flight a couple of hours later, insisting Kate stay in his room until she felt sober enough—together enough—to go home. He'd pressed a soft kiss to her cheek on his way out and then he was gone. 

In another world, another life, Colin Hunt could have been a good man for her.

But this was her world, this was her life. And here Colin Hunt couldn’t hold a candle to Richard Castle. 

No one could. 

“You saw his cock, Castle.” Kate forced out a humorless laugh, too much air in it. “What do you think?”

He stepped into her, their thighs bumping. “Did he make you come with that thick, uncut British cock?” Castle asked, voice low and dry. Hard. “I know from first hand experience how much work it is to get you to loosen the fuck up, Beckett.” He snorted. “I might actually feel a little sorry for the guy.” 

The fire in her chest flared, bright and white and all-consuming. “And what about your little stewardess, Castle? Huh? Was she _ fun _?” Kate rolled her eyes. “I bet she fucks like a porn star, nothing but fake moans and cliched dirty talk.”

“Oh, she's a big talker,” Castle nodded, his mouth an ugly slash of a smile. “She loves to talk. Well, actually, if I'm being pedantic, it's mostly just begging.” The slash grew bigger, more twisted as he pitched his voice up into an imitation of Jacinda’s. “‘_ Harder, Rick. Don’t stop. Ooh ooh ooh. _’”

Kate’s fists clenched. Her throat burned. She leaned in, breasts pressing against his chest, the tip of her nose brushing his. “_ Fuck _ you.” 

Her lungs caught with her gasp when his fingers twisted in her hair. Castle jerked her head back and she just barely heard the growled _ fuck you, Beckett _ before his mouth was on her. He bit at her lips and she couldn’t stop the moan. Didn’t even bother to try. 

This was _ so much better _. Even furious, it was so much better with him.

Castle pressed her back until her shoulders hit the tiled walled. He attacked her mouth, lips and tongue and teeth, pulled at her hair and her clothes with rough, frenetic hands. Kate wound a leg around his thigh and gripped his ass, dug her nails into his shoulder. 

“I can _ smell _you,” Castle bit out, shoving a hand between their bodies. He pressed two fingers to the crotch of her pants and Kate felt the way her clothes sunk into the puddle of wetness there. “I can always fucking smell you.” 

Kate bit at his neck, clawed at the exposed skin at his collar. “I can smell her _ on _ you. Did you even shower after you fucked her?” 

Castle shoved his hand down the front of her pants. Kate bit back the instinctive whimper when he found her cunt—soaking wet and throbbing—and slicked two fingers over her. “I took her _ in _the shower, Beckett,” he hissed, shoulder dipping as he drove his fingers into her, ground the heel of his hand against her clit. “Did you get this sloppy wet for the Detective Inspector?” 

Fuck no, she hadn’t. Not even when she’d allowed herself to imagine, to pretend, that it wasn’t Colin Hunt’s cock in her mouth but this man’s. The only man she could imagine actually _ wanting _ to do this with ever again. Even if it was only ever rough, angry fucks in hotel lobby bathrooms. 

“Castle,” she groaned, rocking into the thrust of his fingers. She gripped his hair and hiked her leg higher on his thigh, tried to pull him closer. “Fuck.” 

“You didn’t, did you?” Castle nosed her ear, bit hard at the pounding pulse in her neck. “This isn’t leftover, sloppy seconds, Beckett. This is fresh.” A third finger slid into her and Kate let out a filthy moan, her head rolling against the tiles. “This is mine.” 

Of course it was. 

Everything she had, everything she was. It was all his. Castle’s. 

The problem was that he didn’t want it anymore. 

“_Castle_.” 

“You better come, Beckett.” He ground her clit viciously into her pubic bone, pumped his fingers noisily in and out of her cunt. “Come for me right the fuck now.” 

She fisted the back of his hair and pulled him to her mouth, kissed him with everything she had. All the pent up fury and grief and passion. She poured it into his mouth, tasted a reflection of it all on the tip of his tongue. 

Her orgasm hit hard and fast. Made her knee buckle and her back arch. She clung to him as the waves crashed over her, tried not to let herself cry. 

* * *

She was still reeling when he dropped her. Beckett caught the edge of the sink with a flailing hand, barely kept her feet. He was staring at her, shellshock creeping over his visage, while she was a heart-pounding thick-swollen mess.

“Fuck you,” she croaked. She swallowed roughly, their eyes locked and burning.

“You…” His chest heaved but no other words came out. She could see the bulge at his crotch where the tails of his untucked shirt couldn’t possibly hide it. How _ much _ he wanted her. 

God, he was huge.

Hunt had been a cruel tease. Even Castle’s thick fingers weren’t enough. “You just gonna stand there?” 

“Your move, Beckett,” he said finally. His eyes glittered like blue flame, narrow, hot. “I got you wet. You choose what to do with it.”

She glared, gripping the sink because she was still off-kilter. “And I got you fucking hard.” She tilted her chin toward his groin. “Looks painful there, Castle. Did you not get the chance to come down her throat a few times?” His eyes narrowed, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “Because she seems like the _ perfect _ bitch to give head.”

“No,” he said coldly. “That would be _ your _ move. Not even giving me a chance to get inside you, forcing me to be done before I’m _ ever _ done with you.” But he took the last three steps between them and grabbed her by the wrist, yanked her free of the wall to pull her roughly in front of him. “See?”

She lifted her gaze to the mirror over the sink and God, her own reflection was an unholy mix of wanton and fuck-me. Behind her, Castle’s eyes burned hot tracks to her breasts under the shirt, heaving.

“Couldn’t get it up before now,” he croaked, shoving his hands under her shirt at her waist. Gripping hard. “Sure can now. You need a good fucking, Beckett.”

“I really do,” she breathed. Her cheeks flamed but honesty in sex had always been her code; the politeness game when it came to orgasms got her nowhere. “You gonna keep talking, Castle, or are you gonna shut up and give it to me?”

He thrust against her ass and she gasped, gripping the sink. Grinding against the cleft of her cheeks, his body taut and hard and massive at her back, he growled curses into her hair. Sank his teeth into her neck. Something about _ can’t even get hard without you. _

She clung to the edge of the sink, pushing her ass back to goad him. He snarled and shoved his hands up to her breasts, kneading painfully. Erotically.

She came up on her toes, determined to keep her damn mouth shut. He liked her noises, liked driving her out of her mind, and she wasn’t in the mood to give him what he wanted.

“Fuck me,” she growled.

“You don’t deserve it.”

She shoved against the sink to crush back into his groin, saw her own fury in the mirror. “I don’t deserve to be manhandled,” she snapped. But oh God, _ manhandle me. _

He twisted her nipples so that she cried out. A short sound, caught before it echoed, but enough to please him.

“That’s more like it. He laughed darkly and kneaded a breast, shoved his other hand down her pants. 

She bit back a noise she wouldn’t let him have, her eyes sliding shut even as he fingered her again. 

“Now you’re ready for me,” he growled. She felt his cock throbbing at her backside, his fumbling at his pants. She released the sink with one hand to reach back, unerringly found his cock through the slit in his unzipped pants.

He breathed a curse and she scraped her nails at his warm balls.

“Beckett,” he snapped.

She didn’t answer him, only chafed his bulging erection, played with the testicles that hung between his legs. He kept shifting his stance, widening his feet, giving her room to work him.

He was breathing like a horse, his forehead buried in her hair, his hands working at her pants in a haphazard sort of way. He had tilted so far forward into her that she was off-balanced, her hips crushed by the sink, bruised. He was so frenzied she had to wonder if he’d even come upstairs at all—

“Get these fucking pants down,” he complained. He sounded rough, inchoate. He was still pawing at her waistband. “Beckett. God damn it, you had better get moving.”

She shimmied and finished the job, letting her pants fall around her ankles. He grabbed the crotch of her panties from behind and yanked, making her fall forward over the sink, grabbing for purchase.

He caressed her ass and flank. “That’s better.” His cock was already nudging between her legs; he was pushing forward, rubbing his erection at her cunt. Her pelvis was pinned against the sink, his body practically draped over hers. He touched his tongue to her ear. “You taste like sex. God, you’re so wet.” A possessive hand crushed her breast and twisted her nipple. “Wet for me, just like I’m hard for you.”

She was shaking, bent forward over the sink even as he grunted at her neck. Her shirt was rucked up to her armpits, her breasts half out of her pink camisole.

“I can’t believe Hunt got to touch any of this.” He was a demonic form behind her, his hands rough and possessive over her body, under her shirt, over her ass. “He can’t possibly know what to do with all this. What you need.”

“What I _ need_? Fuck, Castle.” She could scream, she was so fucking worked up. “You better start fucking me; that’s what I need.”

“All about you, Beckett, isn’t it?” He kept rubbing his cock through her folds, fingers prying her open to him. “What about what I need?” He thrust, making her hips jolt against the sink, the head of his cock fitting into the tight place between her legs, just there, so damn close. “I need a good hard fuck. That’s what I need.”

He shoved himself inside her.

She cried out, arching hard, but his arms were banded around her, kept her tight and close to his body.

She was shaking. She had to get her shit together. She couldn’t let him unmake her with just one thrust. “You better have used a condom with that bitch,” she rasped.

“She’s actually a kind person.” A stutter of his hips as he went deep. “Hunt better not have ridden you like I do.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the plan.”

She grunted, eyes sliding shut.

“Open your fucking eyes.”

She moaned, feeling the high tight thickness of his cock. Unable to _ breathe _, that thickness wedged inside her.

He wrapped her hair around his hand and yanked, pulling her back against his chest. Upright. She sucked air into her now-working lungs. He sucked a hickey at her neck just under the material of her shirt. “Fuck, you better open your damned eyes, Beckett, and _ see _ what you did to us.”

She moaned, eyes dragging open.

For a moment all she saw was herself. The turtleneck twisted under her arms, one breast out of her camisole and the nipple chafed and swollen. And then she saw the man behind her, framing her, bracing her, holding her up.

He yanked her hair, made her look. She panted for breath, her eyes darting over the graphic picture they made. He lowered his free hand to the twisted waistband of her panties and pushed his fingers to her clit. She gasped, and the arch of her body made his cock hit something deep inside her.

“Oh God, Castle,” she moaned. “Fuck me, I need you to fuck me. I need _ you _.”

“You look so pretty in this pink.” He circled her clit with that slow drag, a hard breath at her ear, the sweat plastering her hair to her neck. He began fucking her, slowly, calling her name when she began to spiral into that sex-haze, calling her name to bring her back to them in the mirror. 

Her body pried open and strung up for him. A receptacle for his need. For his pain. The dark dangerous fury in his eyes, the strange sadness.

Forcing her to confront it. To confront herself.

_ She needed this. _

He jerked on her hair and thrust, and she was shattering around his cock, crying out into the orgasm. He roared into her hair and spilled out inside her, grinding her into the sink with the force of his climax.

He let go of her.

She collapsed to the sink, elbows hooked over the edge as her knees went weak. With shaky legs, she stood.

He had fallen back against the bathroom door, knees bent, spent cock in the darkness of his fly. He saw her looking and straightened up, face still thunderous. 

She grabbed a few paper towels and held them out. He took them and ran water in the sink, cleaned himself up as she did the same. She adjusted her panties, sodden with fluids, put her breast back inside the camisole, pulled up her pants, their eyes skittering away as they caught each other’s reflection in the mirror.

She left the family bathroom first, escaping out the door with not even her dignity.


	13. Headhunters

** _CASTLE_ **

They rejected you, and you feel betrayed.

[Alexis nods.]

** _ALEXIS_ **

How am I supposed to get over that? ...Stanford has always been my dream school. But what if their initial rejection was the universe sending me a sign that I'm better off somewhere else?

** _CASTLE_ **

You think you'd be better off somewhere else?

** _ALEXIS_ **

I don't know. Do you?

_ CASTLE _

I don't know either. I guess the question is, do you want it badly enough...to get over being hurt?

* * *

“Or he’s protecting himself by not taking more emotional risks,” Dr Burke said calmly.

Her heart sank. Leaning on her knees, she bowed forward, the weight of it threatening to crush her. She had two options here, neither of them good. Either he had moved on, he wasn’t in the same place as that day in the cemetery, or loving her wasn’t worth the risk for him because loving her was getting him hurt. 

She couldn’t help remembering those two photos she’d taken, one right after the other, the day of the Ryans’ wedding: the moment where he’d thought she was walking away from him, such deep disappointment, and then the moment he’d realized she had only distanced herself for better framing, the overwhelming joy.

She knew she didn’t often give him those moments of joy. Not lately. Not in a long time.

She chewed on her lip and glanced to her therapist, a plaintive note in her voice she couldn’t control. “So then, what do I do?

“What do you want to do?”

_ Fuck his brains out.  _ She wanted to tie him down and  _ make _ him. But maybe that was the whole of her problem. She was hurting him; he was retreating from pain like any wounded animal would. “I shouldn’t keep using him,” she answered.

Dr Burke drew in a breath. “Using him. Can you unpack that statement for me, Kate?”

“You know,” she muttered, waving a hand at nothing. At the whole history of her fucked-up-ness. “Sex therapy. First damn night it happened, I panicked so hard that I called your office like I was a suicide risk, and that should have been a warning sign.”

“It takes two to tango, as they say.”

Rick Castle tangoed very well. Enthusiastically. Creatively. Aggressively.

Viciously. The family bathroom at the hotel was a vivid burn behind her eyes. In the bruises at her hip bones. All that anger and grief…

“I can be persuasive,” she muttered. He loved her and she… fucked him up. “It should stop. We should stop.”

“Why do you think that is, Kate?” 

Something about the even tone of Dr. Burke’s voice always made her second-guess herself. Like he really wanted to be telling her she was full of shit, but he couldn’t do that, so he over-compensated by being aggressively neutral. 

So she did think about it; she took a moment. But still: “I shouldn’t be doing this to him,” she said. The rising shame was enough to burn the back of her eyes. “Using him. While he’s in  _ love _ with… or was.” Had been in love with her, maybe might not be any longer. 

“And what do you think that says to him, if you stop having sex?”

“That he  _ matters. _ ” She took a deep breath and tried to quell the pounding of her heart, the sudden slickness of her palms. “I’ve confused him,  _ hurt _ him, and now he’s withdrawing and—and—and, what did you call it? Protecting himself from me.”

“I didn’t say—”

“I have to stop this.” She blew out a fast breath. “ _ This _ is therapy, this is where the work is, the healing.”

Not in bed.

Not on her knees.

Not with his head between her legs.

No more  _ using _ Castle 

* * *

Rick Castle knew shame.

Being arrested naked on a police horse he’d stolen in Central Park while Meredith’s actor friends had watched, he held a tiny shred of shame for that, especially when the hot young detective had brought it up with such disdain. His tear-streaked three year old daughter sobbing for her mother in the middle of the night because Daddy wasn’t enough, oh yeah, buckets of shame, heaps of shame, swimming in shame. Shame had stung him before.

But he had always managed to turn it around.

Laughed off the naked thing, strutted proudly to the squad car with a  _ cocky _ grin. Scooped up his nightmare-soaked little girl and ridden her downstairs to the kitchen for heaps of ice cream and a silly puppet show which ended with a camp-out in the office and his daughter asleep on his chest.

This case, with Slaughter, the coerced confession, hat in his hands coming to Beckett for help, none of that felt good.

Nothing had felt good in a while.

As her car combed the area where their victim had been found, Beckett checked his map from time to time as if studying the area. She still gave him that iron visage, and he knew nothing was getting in. 

Or coming out.

But damn it, he was so tired of being made to feel like the bad guy here. This ride-along with Slaughter was supposed to have injected a little  _ fun _ into his work life again, filled the sails of his flagging inspiration. He’d wanted a case that he could sink his teeth into, that had all the weird details like they used to—

“There’s the subway station,” she said, as if to herself. “And then way over here…”

The car slowly cruised to a stop under the overpass, Beckett staring resolutely ahead. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. 

He didn’t owe her any answers. He didn’t owe her  _ anything _ ; she’d already made that clear. This was a means to an end for her. 

“You know, Slaughter isn’t how a cop should be,” she said quietly. “That’s not what the badge stands for.”

He could strangle her. “I was looking for a different perspective. A way to shake things up. Inject a little drama.”

She was silent. Judging. 

Fuck, but that drove him nuts. “Your way isn’t the only way to do thins. Yes, Slaughter crossed a line with this one. He bends the rules, but he’s out there protecting and serving, putting his life on the line, even if it’s not the same as you.”

“There’s more to the badge than putting yourself in the line of fire.”

They both flinched. And it only made him more furious. That she could say that was so fucking hypocritical. “Oh, yeah? Like what.”

“Integrity,” she growled. “The badge stands for integrity. Doing the  _ right  _ thing. Keeping my word.”

“Oh, that’s  _ rich _ coming from you.”

“What does that mean?”

“ _ Seriously _ ?” He grabbed for the door handle but she snagged the arm of his jacket. When he looked at her, those dark eyes were livid.

“I’m asking you, Castle. Point blank. Either you give me a real answer, or we keep doing this.”

“No. Because I’m  _ not _ doing this.”

“Why else would you go out with Slaughter but to get back at me?” she said. Her jaw was set. “Why else go through all this but to rub it in my face?”

“Not everything is about you. I just wanted to inject some  _ action _ into things. I wanted, for  _ once _ , to just  _ go _ for it.”

She pierced him with those unfathomable eyes. “Oh yeah? Acting tough, being a badass, that’s what does it for you now, Castle?”

“Yeah,” he snapped. “That’s what does it for me.” They  _ both _ fucking knew this wasn’t about Slaughter right now; they had left Slaughter far far behind.

Her hand dropped to his groin and copped a feel, reached in to roughly squeeze his balls. “Let’s see how much of a badass you really are.”

* * *

This was bad. 

Wrong. 

It went against every single second of the session she’d had with Burke. Broke every silent vow she’d made to herself—and to Castle—about putting an end to this. To her abuse of his desire in order to fulfill her own selfish needs. To let him go, if that’s truly what he wanted. 

Grabbing him by the cock in the front seat of her unmarked, department issue cruiser was bad. And wrong. 

But like fucking hell she was going to stop. 

Not when she could feel the hardness of him growing against her palm by the second. The pound of his pulse (or maybe it was hers) where her wrist pressed against his upper thigh. Hear the way his breath came stuttering out of his nostrils like he’d just run up a dozen flights and was trying to steady his lungs again. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Castle growled, fingers still gripping the door handle. She could see the whites of his knuckles standing out stark in the dark shadows of the car. “Beckett—” 

“You think Slaughter’s never gotten his rocks off in his city car?” She squeezed and his hips shifted. “Never prioritized his dick over a case?”

Castle gritted his teeth, tightened his grip around her wrist. “I’m not Slaughter.” 

Thank fuck for that. 

“No,” Kate twisted her arm, grinding her palm into his crotch and breaking his hold simultaneously. “But you want to be.” Or... “You want  _ me  _ to be. So come on, Castle.” She curled her fingertips, felt his thighs flex as she pressed against his balls. “Nut up.” 

Kate reached out and flicked off the headlights, then leaned back over the console to get closer to him. Darkness swallowed the underpass and Castle huffed, flexed his hand against his knee. She gripped the tab on his zipper and tugged. Didn’t bother to be gentle over the bulge of his cock. 

Castle swallowed next to her ear. “I don’t really think Slaughter would fuck me in the front seat of his Charger.” 

“Nobody said  _ I _ was going to either.”

Kate slipped her hand into his open fly, the denim rough against her knuckles. Her fingertips touched silk and she felt wetness pool between her own legs. Fuck, but she loved those silk boxers. The way they felt brushing against her thighs when he bent her over the back of her own couch and—

No. 

Fuck. 

No. This wasn’t about that. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t let herself get maudlin or romantic. Couldn’t think about the beautiful parts of this thing between them. Because of her, there were no beautiful parts. Not anymore. 

Kate shoved her hand into the fly of his boxers. Her fingers closed around him, thick and scalding hot, and Castle grunted. Kate swept up over his head, slicking her fingertips with the moisture leaking from him. Her jaw clenched, saliva collecting at the base of her tongue. She swallowed against the urge to contort herself even further over the console between their seats and take him into her mouth. 

Castle jerked his hips as she twisted around his head and slid back down, fingers fluttering. “This what being a cop means, Beckett?” He pressed back into the seat, chest expanding. “Jerking off your partner in the car?”

Her nails scraped at his balls and she felt his cock twitch against her grip. “You wanted to be a badass, Castle. Wanted to be tough.  _ This _ —” she jerked him roughly, let the darkness collect her grin when he moaned, “is what that means.”

“Should have shown me this years ago.” Castle grunted. He released the door handle, reached between his legs. His arm crossed over hers and Kate hid her groan in the shift of her hips when he gripped his balls through the fabric of his jeans. “Saved us both a lot of hassle.”

A lot of heartache. 

Maybe she could have, if she'd have given into it, fucked him after that first case. She'd wanted to. More than she was proud of. 

“You couldn't have handled it years ago, Castle.” The silk boxers slipped easily over the back of her hand as she fisted his cock in hard, sharp jerks. “You can barely handle it now. Running to me to save your ass at the first sign of trouble.”

Castle massaged his testicles through his pants and she watched, desperate to shove a hand down her own pants and relieve the angry throb in her clit. 

“You lasted longer than I'd thought you would.” Longer than she'd hoped. “But I knew you'd get overwhelmed and come to me.”

Castle grunted, jerked his hips. 

“And now you're going to come for me,” Beckett whispered, cranking her wrist and pumping her fist. 

Thirty seconds later he was gripping her elbow and flexing his stomach, mouth silently parted and eyes wide open. Fixed on her. 

Kate held him as he spasmed, coming onto his own thigh. One final caress of her thumbnail along his shaft and she withdrew her hand from his pants. Her badge thumped against the door when she straightened up in her seat. 

The headlights came back on with a flick of her wrist. She pulled her flashlight out of the console and reached for the door handle. 

“I'll be out here when you're ready to be my partner again.” 

The dome light was on only long enough for her to climb out of the car but it was too long. She saw his face, the hollowness in his eyes, when she spun around to slam the door. 

He wasn't really her partner anymore, was he?

* * *

_ All’s well that ends well? _

It damn sure didn’t feel like it. This wasn’t a resolution, this was a mess. She’d challenged a whole gang and thrown down an ultimatum for them to leave her city, and Castle couldn’t see that ending well even as he was entirely turned on by her badassery.

Only it was badassery as a means of fixing his stupid mistakes, to cover  _ his _ ass, and he knew with sinking clarity what he’d done to her.

He’d made more work for her.

First day, first interrogation, she’d nastily cut him to the core with that one:  _ That makes you one of two things in my world. Either the guy who makes my life easier or the guy who makes my life harder, and trust me, you do not want to be the guy who makes my life harder _ _ . _

He was now the guy who made her life harder.

Watching her walk away, heading back for her court deposition, to hold together justice with her bare hands and wit—

Damn, that was a good line.

He winced and fished in his pocket for his phone, hurriedly typed the line into his notes. His mind was already off and running, new ideas, a thread of a plot for this character introduction to Nikki’s world, and now he was ashamed.

He’d gotten what he had wanted: inspiration.

Of course, it had come from  _ her _ . Not Slaughter. Beckett charging in on her white steed to save the day, and his ass. She’d insinuated that she was the one being a true partner while he’d been dumping her, but the truth was that she’d done what she always did, and would have done no matter who he was.  _ That _ he had to keep in mind; he wasn’t special.

She was.

Damn, he owed her big time. But first, he needed to hurry home and get this written. Couldn’t be worth nothing, could it? Had to be worth something, if only a few lines and a plot twist.

He called his car service so he could have his hands and brain free to write, using his notes program to sketch the dialogue, set the scene, practically writing the scene as the car stopped and started again in rush hour traffic. His head was so full of possibilities, the way it could play out, what happened next, and he was itching to get out of the car and get to his laptop.

When he finally unlocked his front door and shucked his jacket, he nearly tripped trying to get to his office. The apartment was dark, guaranteeing that his family members were out and about, which meant he had privacy and space to concentrate. There was nothing that drove him more crazy than interruptions—important as they were—from his mother and daughter while he was in the zone like this.

Castle wrote.

All of it, the confusion and frustration, the waiting, the hopefulness, the hot sex, the budding resentment, all of it. Went into the story, into the writing. He didn’t always know it was there until later, until his editor sent back comments about themes and character motivations remaining consistent, but it was clear this time. Weaving his new wild-man character into the framework of the existing plot, Castle created a world in which he could safely control and handle and process the submerged emotions that threatened his world.

He wrote and it was good.

Damn, but it was very good, and he knew it. More than that, the novel had been missing something, something vital, and he’d needed that kick in the pants to figure it out, the inspiration to strike. 

And it had. She had. Oh,  _ had _ she.

He still felt the icy burn of her hand on his cock, the strangling feeling of her jerking him off in her standard-issue police car. Damn, but he’d had so many lurid fantasies of that very thing, his detective ‘protecting and serving’ him, and instead it had been…

Wrong.

Castle slumped back in his desk chair and tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling.

It had felt wrong. And not the illicit taboo kind of wrong, but the wrong where his guts twisted up and everything was awkward. The wrong of blurred lines of consent, psychic damage,  _ what about that wall _ , and shame.

She had done that to him, she had dragged him down with her into the spiral of shame and anger when all he wanted to do was love her. He knew she had struggled in the beginning with the  _ meaning _ he would place on their having sex, that he’d take it too far, but she’d been right.

Sex meant something when it was between them. Sex was more than scratching an itch when it was them together. 

At least, it was to him.

It wasn’t for her, apparently. Which meant, he was sorry to say, that she’d been right about stopping them cold  _ months _ ago. He couldn’t be the playboy when it came to her, and that was apparently all she wanted. No strings right now. 

Well fuck that, he had strings. He wanted the strings, damn it, and she’d taunted him into coming in her hand in her squad car.

And now he was good and pissed at her for doing it. For forcing him to capitulate to her seduction, for conditioning him to be so achingly hard for her the second her voice lowered an octave. She had given him a hand job to prove a fucking point, that he was pathetic without her, that he couldn’t make it on his own, and  _ fine _ . Point made.

But it was cruel to tease like that. Cruel to touch him when she knew he craved so much more. Not just an orgasm, not just a hand job in the darkness of an overpass—

Everything.

And he couldn’t have it. 

But he could damn well have  _ her _ orgasm.

Castle stood, so abrupt that his laptop nearly crashed to the floor. 

It was time to even things up. 

He did owe her one, didn’t he? She’d saved his ass with Slaughter. It was only right that he pay her back for that.

So Castle got off his ass.

He was calling Ryan on his way out the door, half-assing his way through the pleasantries and then jumping right to the important part. “Look, Ryan, has Detective Beckett finished the deposition and gone home for the day? She has? Excellent.”

* * *

Beckett didn’t reach for the weapon she kept in her desk when her front door shuddered at half-past four. She didn’t even spare the drawer a glance. There was no need. The danger waiting for her in her hallway wasn’t one she could handle with a Glock 19. 

Her eyes did flit to the recently discarded DKNY heels standing like sentinels next to her coat rack. The balls of her feet ached from eight hours of compression but she slid back into the shoes anyway, toes screaming in protest. The four extra inches made her shoulders drop and roll back, her hips pitch forward. The band of her bra cut into her ribs when she inhaled, filling her lungs with as much air as they could hold and then a little bit more. 

Kate flipped the bolt and the security bar, gripped the cool metal of the door handle. Twisted. 

“Castle.” 

His shoulders almost filled the door frame. “Beckett. Can I come in?”

That he asked was surprising. She had figured they were well past social niceties after the cruiser. 

After the hotel bathroom.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

He reached out, fingers curling around the angle of her hip, and her ribs caught. “Come on, Beckett. Let me in.” The pad of his thumb ran over her dress pants, drew a lazy loop around the tattoo inked into her skin beneath the fabric, that sensitive place he liked to paint with his lips and tongue before dragging his mouth to the apex of her thighs. “I’ll be quick.” 

She wanted to let him in. Wanted to hook her fingers into his belt loops and slam their bodies together. Grind her hips against his and slick her tongue into his mouth and feel his hands gripping her ass, her hair, her breasts. She wanted to—everything. She wanted it all. 

But she couldn’t keep doing this. Shouldn’t. 

Wouldn’t.

Kate took a step forward, pushing the door toward the jamb. “Go home, Castle.” 

He caught the door with his shoulder, muscled inside anyway. “No.”

“You picked up some bad habits, hanging around Slaughter.” She closed the door after he was already inside, at least proud of the acid in her tone. (Because it meant the heels had been a smart choice on her part. Steel in her spine, her resolve uneroded. She could do this.)

He ignored the dig and strode past her to the center of the living room. “I was writing.”

“And so?” She gestured to the way he was dominating her space.  _ And so this? _

“I haven’t written since—” He stopped, and his ears were red, but probably not as heated as her throat where the shame lived. “Anyway, I was writing again, and it was damn good, and I always know when it’s good. You know, some people?, they stress about it, they agonize. I’ve never really done that. I write it and I can  _ feel _ how solid it is… that’s not why I’m here.” He ran a hand down his face like he needed a change of scenery for a moment, or to forcibly shift his demeanor. “Look, I owe you one.”

The jolt went down through her pelvis and made her toes curl in the shoes. “What?”

His eyes were dark as he nodded, striding forward to grasp her just above her elbows. “Yeah, you heard me right.”

He owed her an  _ orgasm _ . “No. You don’t. I—”

“I do,” he growled. Didn’t tug on her, not this time; instead he stepped right into her space so her feet were forced slightly apart. “I owe you for saving my ass with Slaughter, for backing my play—”

Oh, good. Okay, just that. Not an orgasm. Silly. She’d heard the gravel in his voice (that tone he used when he said filthy things to her) and she had sex on the brain, and she’d just assumed.

His fingers trailed over her breast and she gasped.

“For inspiring me.”

“Inspiring you?” She sounded moronic but his fingers traced a circle over the cashmere of her turtleneck, and now his wide finger was outlining her nipple through the fabric. “Castle, this can’t happen.”

“Yet it keeps happening.”

“I’m…” Petrified. She was filled with terror. And eroticism, the slow constant circle he made over skin-warmed cashmere and lace bra. “I’ve been at court all day.” Was that a no? How weak, how  _ vulnerable _ she sounded. “I shouldn’t have molested you in the car.”

It came out a whisper.

“Maybe not,” he said. His warm palm encompassed her breast, and the other hand released her wrist to brush at the side-seam of her pants. “Though it had a happy ending.” 

No. It hadn’t. “Castle, we’re not having sex.”

There. She’d said it. Out there. Firm.

“No, we’re not,” he agreed easily. And now he was tugging down the side zipper with that other hand, the slide of material against her thighs as he slipped inside her pants. “We’re not having sex. I’m writing you a happy ending.” His palm slid over her ass and teased between her legs.

“What?” She rocked into him, off-balanced in her shoes, bracing herself against his chest. Words deserted her as he hooked his fingers in her panties and knuckled apart her ass cheeks. “God.”

He was breathing fast against her cheek, molding and rubbing her breast with one hand while the other found the wetness streaking her folds. “Good girl,” he growled, fingering her with those light easy touches that made her burn. “I’ve been typing all day, my fingers are in fighting shape for this.”

“Oh,” she shivered. Her breath came in short pants, she had fisted the placket of his shirt, she was already up on her toes; she couldn’t believe the fire between her legs.

“You inspired me, Beckett.” His lips ghosted her cheek while his fingers made dirty words against her clit. “I thought I needed rough, forward movement rather than all this waiting around—”

Oh, God, how could her heart be pierced even as her sex throbbed for him?

“But it seemed I needed a little direct pressure—” He penetrated her sex and began fucking her slowly. “Just the right amount of dire straits—” He withdrew and painted her wetness against her thighs. “To make the light bulb go off.” He stepped back.

She swayed. Lost her grip on his shirt, disoriented.

He pushed her by her hips and she stumbled backward, snared by the material of her pants, snared by the flat blue of his eyes. Deadly, intent. A plan.

She hit the arm of the chair and sank into it backwards, and he came after her, stripping her pants down to her ankles. He was kneeling and spreading her thighs before she could think.

His mouth on her made her cry out. She clutched his head between her legs, felt the messiness of herself as his tongue and lips sucked at her, the bump and bruise of his knuckles as he held her underwear aside. She humped his face without inhibition, head thrown back, sweat slicking between her breasts as the pressure built.

He knew how to touch her, how to fuck her; he knew what put her out of her mind, and he wasn’t holding back. She squirmed and writhed against his face, gripping his ears, hanks of hair, his jaw, one leg hooked at his ribs, the other over the arm of the chair, her body spasming even as she thought  _ Oh God no no no _ —

She climaxed with a snatched fist, breath and voice stolen, her body shredded with pleasure.

* * *

Kate gasped out the last of her orgasm, her body clutching and releasing around a phantom intrusion. She could feel Castle’s breath, hot and humid, against her inner thighs, his fingers still curled around the soaked crotch of her panties. 

The tip of his nose brushed along the crease where her leg met her hip, soft. Intimate. Her fingers curled around the shell of his ear and Kate blinked heavy eyelids, heart stutter-stepping.

“Castle—”

His lips and chin shone when he looked up at her from between her legs. 

His eyes didn’t. 

“Maybe,” Castle gruffed, thumb digging into the flexed muscle of her thigh, “we need to revisit that ‘we’re not having sex’ decree, Detective. I think we both could use a little—” he leaned in, bit the soft skin at the side of her knee—”release.” 

Technicolor memories flashed across her retinas, as bright and bold as the bruises that still stained the skin at her hips: The weight of his body pounding hers relentlessly against the edge of a sink. His hands mangling her breasts and her clit. The scald of his cock inside her, his breath on her neck, as he fucked her hard. And fast. And angry. 

Of course she wanted him. But not like that. 

Not again. 

Not when she knew—had glimpsed—had almost been ready for—

But that didn’t matter anymore did it? The things they could have been. Because now all they were was  _ this _ . Bitter fucks, confused feelings, replacement muses. They weren’t Castle and Beckett anymore; they were anger and pain. She hated him for it. 

And herself. 

She hated them both and this shadow of what they’d been—her hand down his pants in the front seat in the dark, both of them still fully clothed; his head between her thighs on his knees as his anger tore her raw—this was what they deserved, all they deserved. 

Shadows. Pale imitations of what could have been real.

What they’d both done their share to fuck up.

“What do you say, Beckett?” Castle gave her his best, most lecherous grin and her stomach rolled. “A quick countertop fuck? I know how much you like it on—” 

“No.” Kate drew her legs together. She tucked them between the chair and his body, her toes skimming the front of his chest as she tried to give herself some modicum of modesty. “This can’t happen anymore.”

She reached into her lap, unhooked her panties from his grasp. Castle’s fingers curled into his palm as she took his hand in both of hers and pulled it toward her abdomen. She could feel the knot of tears at the base of her throat, growing with every aching thump of her heart. 

“You need to go home, Castle.” 

Blue eyes, eyes she’d foolishly allowed herself to see a future in, stared back at her. His chest rose and fell. The corner of his mouth twitched and Kate braced herself, readying her resolve for whatever rebuttable he was formulating. 

“Yeah. You’re right,” Castle said, hand going slack between hers. “I should go.” 

She didn’t resist when he pulled his hand away. Tried not to flinch when he gripped the arms of the chair and leveraged himself up, mouth coming within an inch of her cheek. The bulge of his erection was in her eyeline as he stood in front of her and Kate crossed her arms around her waist, curled her fingers into her own turtleneck to stop herself from reaching out for him. From tugging him free and slipping him into her mouth, delaying this already protracted and heartrending ending by another ten minutes. 

Fingers, soft and warm fingers that made her eyes flutter, skimmed the line of her jaw and Kate looked up. Found those blue eyes again. Sweat prickled at the small of her back when he bent at the waist, leaned down into her. 

His kiss tasted delicate. Rich. Easy. 

It tasted like goodbye. 

Castle pulled back and straightened, thumb dragging along her bottom lip. Kate forced herself to look up at him, to bear witness to what she’d wrought. 

“Goodbye, Kate.” 

The tears had stained the collar of her turtleneck before the front door had even closed. Kate pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Half-naked in her living room, she let herself cry in earnest, chest burning with it. What they were, what they weren’t. What they would now never be because she’d been selfish and needy.

Her fingers came over her mouth. She pressed, hard, until she could feel her teeth cutting into the inner flesh of her lips, the iron tang of blood on her tongue. 

That’d been the first time he’d called her Kate in weeks. 


	14. Undead Again

_ **CASTLE** _

_ How does somebody put something like that behind them? He's gonna need therapy. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ It helps. First he won't even be able to deal with it, it's gonna take everything that he's got to just put one foot in front of the other and get through the day. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ I didn't know you were seeing a therapist. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ Yeah, well, I didn't want to make any excuses. I just wanted to put in the time and do the work. But I think I'm almost where I want to be now. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ And...where is that? _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ In a place where I can finally accept everything that happened that day. Everything. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ I think...I understand. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ And, um, that wall that I was telling you about...I think it's coming down. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ Well, I'd like to be there when it does. _

_ **BECKETT**  
_

_ (smiles) Yeah, I'd like you to be there, too. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ Only, without the zombie makeup. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ I don't know, I kind of think that the zombie makeup suits you, Castle. _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ Yeah, I make it work. _

** _BECKETT_ **

_ Tomorrow? _

** _CASTLE_ **

_ Tomorrow. _

* * *

It hadn’t been official, not really, but Rick Castle was nothing if not optimistic. _ Tomorrow. _

Like a promise. And he was going to take her up on it.

He showed up at her front door bearing two coffees and an inexorable sense of _ all will be well. _ They hadn’t talked, not really, but they hadn’t talked in the same way they always hadn’t talked, and he thought that put them right back where they’d started. He wasn’t opposed to that. A quick redo. A reset.

She opened her apartment door and her cheeks were flooded pink, her dark eyes made ever deeper, darker. “Castle?”

He held out her to-go cup as a peace offering. “You didn’t call with a body drop, so I figured it was a leisurely stroll into work this morning.”

She debated the cup; he could see her wondering what it meant, what this boded for them. But she took it, stepped back. “Leisurely enough.”

“Brought the car service,” he added. “We had a few late nights this past week and I thought we could both use a break.”

Her cheeks flushed again as she bent her head over the coffee, though that hadn’t been what he’d meant at all. “Mm, let’s call it a surprising case.”

“But a _ lot _ of fun.”

She glanced at him and then away. He’d been hoping for a chance to push restart, but she might not rise to the occasion. Or know how. She was worrying the plastic lid of the to-go cup. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t push it out.

“I was hoping we could talk,” he told her.

She let out a breath. “Oh.”

Had she thought he was here for _ that _? “Different therapy,” he said, trying for a smile.

She turned on her heel and left him in the living room. He gaped, a moment’s social floundering, before she came striding back in, sliding her weapon into her holster and drawing a jacket on. “Ready,” she said. 

“You need your gun to talk to me?”

She flushed. “No. I just thought. We probably should, you know, walk and talk. I do need to show my face this morning. Before nine.”

“Right.” He was off his stride now, because she hadn’t seemed thrilled with the talking. Perhaps not thrilled with his bringing up therapy? She hadn’t mentioned it to him before yesterday, and with everything they’d been to each other, he would have thought—

No. Stop. He was doing it again. Assuming how she would respond, delineating how she ought to act. This was Kate Beckett, and she was a distinctive individual with reasoning wholly separate from his own. For two adults who had grown up in the same city, they couldn’t come from more different worlds.

“Are you coming, Castle?” At the door, glancing back at him, caution in her eyes but a very faint smile lurking in her lips. As if she wanted this to be something to smile about.

“I’m coming.”

He followed her out of her apartment.

* * *

The drive from her place to the precinct was interrupted by a call from Captain Gates, ruining whatever inroads Castle had made in getting her to open up. With her professional persona in place, the rest of the ride was quiet, neither of them broaching the subject they clearly both needed to speak on. If she said she was in therapy, he believed her, but she still wasn’t much for talking.

So they didn’t get into it.

Which maybe was ideal, considering the moment they stepped through the door, there were a hundred small things pressing for Beckett’s attention. Castle tried to be good and keep in the background, since this was usually the minutiae he avoided, but it was hard not to be annoying.

(And he had such a finely honed skill, why waste it?)

He made paper clip chains, he wrote haiku on post-its and pressed them against the edge of her keyboard: _ when you frown at me / I want to sit up straighter / and tug my sleeves down. _

He did love making her eyes roll.

Of course his haiku got progressively dumber. (_ I could paper clip / chain my way across your desk / and overrun you.) _

She gave him stern looks at first, then imploring looks, then she outright ignored him. 

Finally, she shoved her empty coffee mug into his chest and said _ Go. _

He went. Whistling as he did, feeling pretty damn good about his annoyingness, rolling her coffee mug between his palms. He swung inside the break room and set about making her coffee. And not just any coffee. He forewent the mug for the delicate porcelain cups, wanting something fancy for her this afternoon.

Of course, the moment he pulled a perfect espresso shot, the boys cornered him, alone, and he knew there was still real work to do.

Kevin Ryan looked awkward, but Esposito simply closed the break room doors, both of them, and slowly twisted shut the blinds. His expression was flat and neutral, which meant bad news. But it was Ryan who started things. “So, Castle. Hey.”

“Uh. Hey.” He had the cup in his fingers, hissing as it began to burn. He took a step toward Ryan to pass him, but nothing doing. Ryan stood his ground and Esposito pushed his hands in his pockets, leaned back against the door. “Look guys, good to see you again, all that, but I have the _ perfect _espresso here and I need to get it to its owner.”

“We just want to talk,” Ryan said. Pleasant, his face open, friendly.

Clearly, Ryan was the one to negotiate with here. “We can do that, yes. But first let me get this to the lovely Detective Beckett.”

Esposito came up from the door, stalked toward him. He knew he’d taken a misstep with that phrasing, the faint hint of disrespectful male gaze. He _ knew _ that, and yet he’d said it anyway. Why did he say these things? Esposito still scared him.

“Your car in the body shop?” he asked Espo. Hissing as his fingers burned. He cast his eyes around for a saucer, trying not to let the cup tremble. “How about those zombies? I think that case was a highlight of my—”

“Castle,” Esposito barked. “Stop nervous-talking.”

He glanced to Ryan who gave him a frown, a disapproving shake of his head. “Right. Yeah, okay. Let’s talk later, guys. I really need to get this out there to Beckett as—ah, yikes—it burns, it burns.”

Esposito plucked the cup out of his fingers and dumped that _ perfect _ espresso down the drain. Castle gaped at him as he tossed the cup gracelessly to the sink. Espo crossed his arms over his chest and, like a mirror, Ryan did the same.

“What is going on with you, man?”

“What do you mean?” he stalled.

“You talking like this is your last case, like you’re done with us,” Esposito barked.

“Was I?” He shook his head wildly, a hand pressed to his sternum. “Me? No.”

“You were,” Ryan said quietly. And it was that soft quiet that made Castle deflate.

Sometimes Espo terrified him, but it was Ryan he couldn’t stand to disappoint. Kevin Ryan had always been like a little brother to him, eager to please, willing to go along, excited for the more ‘non-traditional’ answers.

“I misread some things,” he said finally. But he knew that wasn’t enough, and neither of the two men backed down. “You know how I like to tell a good story?”

Espo snorted.

Castle shrugged, hands lifted in surrender. “Sometimes I tell _ too _ good a story. And I start to believe it’s actually true. If you tell it long enough, often enough, the details are so familiar they feel real.”

Ryan was nodding.

“What the hell are you talking about, man?” Esposito scoffed, arms unfolding but his body language all the more threatening as he stepped forward, face hard. “What does a story have to do with how you’ve been treating us?”

_ Us_. He meant Beckett, and everyone in this room knew that.

Even these two, who were supposedly friends of his, talked in subtext and riddles about the most important things. Maybe she set the tone, maybe that was just how cops managed to survive, but it had gotten them in this mess in the first place.

He needed to be transparent. Nothing else would work. “I tell myself a story so many times, I think it’s real. And I’ve done _ that _ so many times, a kind of selective hearing develops. I think the best of myself, of the people around me, in self-defense. My home life wasn’t easy, and I adapted. Not always in healthy ways.”

Ryan was staring at him. Esposito looked distinctly uncomfortable. 

“I thought we were… friends,” he continued. He was still holding back, he realized. He was talking about _ them _ when it was really about _ her _—but maybe this conversation should be between him and Beckett first. This could be a test case, an experimental foray into clearing the air. “And then I was afraid I’d simply been telling myself a story. The story of our… friendship. If it wasn’t real, then I shouldn’t keep intruding.”

“What,” Esposito rasped. He was scowling again. “Nah, man. We’re friends.”

His throat closed up and he bobbed his head. “Yes, well. Burned enough times, one starts to become paranoid.”

“You’re not intruding,” Ryan added. “Not anymore.”

Rick chuckled, put at ease by the inadvertent confession. “That’s good to hear.”

“You mean to tell me you were acting all funny and moping around and going off with Slaughter and bringing other chicks to a crime scene because you thought maybe we weren’t _ friends _?”

He winced but caught a glimpse of Beckett rising from her chair. “She’s heading this way.”

And immediately the two detectives scattered, leaving Castle gaping and caught when she came into the break room.

“Castle?”

“I… was just—that is, I was attempting to make an espresso.”

She glanced to the cup in the sink, the clear signs of coffee down the drain, the machine’s after-pull rumbling. “Ah. And what was the verdict?”

“Slightly unresolved.”

She blinked.

He took a deep breath. “No, really, it’s fine. I’ll figure it out.” He glanced to the sink but he took a clean cup from the stack beside the espresso machine. “You deserve a perfect espresso.”

Her teeth caught her lip. “Any coffee at all will do. But I appreciate your dedication.” She glanced to the break room door as if searching for signs of the boys. “Everything okay in here?”

“Everything is as it should be.”

She nodded, turned to go, but hesitated with her hand on the door. “You really are going to make me that coffee, right?” Her head tilted, a shy smile creasing her lips. “I could use one.”

“Yes. Of course. Even if the boys do ambush me again the second you walk out of this room.”

She laughed and the world went bright and sunny. “They won’t. I’ll protect you, Castle.”

“My hero.”

* * *

She felt him staring for the rest of the afternoon. 

But they weren’t those long, unblinking stares of the past month. The ones that made her feel like a specimen, a loathsome creature caught and pinned to a piece of foam, ready for vivisection. Nor were they the heated stares of the six months prior, the ones that made her skin flush and her blood sing with wanting him. 

Instead he looked at her as he had for almost the entirety of their partnership—with soft admiration in his eyes and a mouth that curled up at the edges. As if he knew some secret that pleased him and was struggling to contain it. It was the way he’d looked at her back in their first year when she’d shown up to their undercover assignment in the dress he’d bought for her. It was the same look he’d given her one morning on their way to a crime scene when he’d casually invited her to his house in the Hamptons. It was the look he’d worn in a hotel room in Los Angeles, on a night when she’d been bruised and battered and so very tempted. 

It made her heart lift and twist to see that old, familiar look on him. To see _ him _ again. Castle. Her friend, her partner. The man she—

“You gonna keep staring at that paperwork all night, Beckett? Or can we maybe get out of here at a decent hour for once?” 

The grin that spread across her lips was irrepressible. “You do know that you are under no actual obligation to be here, right?” Kate twisted at the waist to face him, pen still poised over the report she’d been only half-paying attention to for the past twenty minutes. “You can leave whenever you want, Castle.” 

His head shook. “Nope. You’re here, I’m here. That’s the deal.” 

Only it wasn’t. Or it hadn’t been of late. Not since he’d decided to galavant around with dangerously derelict detectives and then declare their most recent case his last. But now—

Now here he was. Sitting in his chair, with his iPhone in one hand and her empty coffee mug at his elbow, gently ribbing her and grinning that half-grin that made him look five years younger. Himself again. 

Hers again. 

Kate dropped the pen and pushed back from the desk with a little too much force. “Let’s get out of here. I’m hungry.” 

“Oh!” Castle jumped from his chair, tilting it back on two legs with his exuberance. “There’s a new Lebanese place a few blocks down that I’ve been dying to try.” 

He shoved his phone into his pocket and her stomach flipped when he reached for the jacket on the back of her chair and held it open for her. Kate slipped her left arm in first and turned her back to him, fishing for the other hole with her right hand. Castle dipped his knees to help her align and slid the fabric up to rest on her shoulders. His fingers skimmed down her biceps and Kate reached back to sweep the length of her hair out of her collar. Castle’s warm breath floated across her exposed neck and her eyelids closed. 

“What do you say, Beckett? You interested in some hummus and tabbouleh and and delicious, delicious pita?” 

Kate snagged her phone off the desk. Tucking it into her pocket, she turned to him and smiled. “Throw in some baklava and make it to go and you’ve got yourself a deal, Castle.” 

She started toward the elevator and heard him scrambling after her. “To go?” 

The call button flickered to life when she jabbed it with her thumb and Kate leaned against the wall with a nod. “Yeah. To go.” Kate looked at him over her shoulder, smiled. “I wanna eat in the park.”

Castle nodded at her, a bit dumbly but still adorably enthused. “That sounds perfect. Great idea.” 

The elevator dinged, the old doors creaking open. Kate stepped in and grinned at him. 

“Haven’t you learned by now, Castle?” She hit the button for the ground floor and watched him scurry—if a man of his size _ could _ scurry—through the closing doors. “All my ideas are great ones.” 

* * *

The beginning of May had brought with it that tantalizing hint of green promises, even though the sun was masked by the grey dome of the sky. 

“It’s amazing to be _ warm _ even without sun on my skin,” she smiled. 

All the sun he needed, that smile. Teeth and lips and her eyes rich. “The air itself is warm, the chill is gone.” He took in a deep breath, realized something in his body had finally eased, that he _ could _ breathe around her and it didn’t shred his lungs like jagged glass. 

She scooped hummus with a bit of soft pita, folded it, pushed it in her mouth. He ought to stop watching her so much. It was like it’d been in the early days, when his fascination couldn’t be contained and everything she’d done revealed some small clue about her inner life.

They didn’t talk for a moment, watching the groups of people on the grass in Central Park. Out of their way, really, but it had seemed the most natural place for them. No blanket, which he regretted for the sake of his pants and the recent rain, but not for the company. She’d had the forethought to be wearing jeans today, and she was sitting on her jacket, pristine and untouched.

But there was a bit of mud on her forearm. He couldn’t help but be snared by that small imperfection. She never showed those in her daily life, not even to him, and seeing the flaws, the cracks…

“How’s Alexis?” she asked, dipping more hummus. “Any news on the college decision?”

He shifted on his damp pants, mesmerized by the way she sank her teeth into her thumb and licked hummus. He shifted again, this time for a different reason, and was glad for the flattened bag on his lap. “She’s decided, yes.” He delicately brushed crumbs from his fingers.

Kate leaned in. “Well? Don’t keep me waiting.”

He grinned. “She said she couldn’t go far away; she didn’t want to miss out on… well, our family. Our things. She’s choosing to stay close.”

“Wow,” Kate said. Her face was… odd. A hint of white around her lips. “Sticking close to home.”

“We were playing our last game of Laser Tag—you remember walking in on our laser tag games, don’t you?—and that seemed to really hit her. She had a cute tantrum about how she didn’t want it to end, and well, that was that.”

“Last game?” Kate asked.

“It’s a time-honored tradition. Frst to a thousand points wins. We’ve been playing since… forever. Last time I got the drop on her she was ten years old, but a couple days ago, I sneaked up on her and managed first blood.”

“First blood. Intense.”

He grinned and took a quick swig of water, warming up to the subject. “We play for keeps. Nothing is off the table. Tricks. Elaborate ploys. Set-ups. Sneaky end runs. Whatever it takes.”

She tilted her head. “Been on the end of that more than once. Works for you.”

His mouth opened but nothing came out.

She smiled, lips pressed together, that _ gotchya _ pride in her eyes.

He grunted and plucked a fresh pita from the cloth, took a bite out of the end.

“And after a game of Laser Tag, you brought her around to college in New York?”

“Columbia is a fine school,” he defended.

“Oh, Columbia?” she asked. “That’s… in the city.”

“I know!” He was practically squealing, and he knew it. “Right in town. So close we can laser tag.”

“But… what if you have a new partner for laser tag?”

“A partner?” He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know how that works. I mean, okay, granted, Laser Tag is usually a team sport. But my mother is notoriously—”

“I mean me.”

Castle jerked his eyes up to her.

Kate was chewing on her lip, hands in her lap.

“Oh.” How was it that he couldn’t breathe? “You want to play with me?”

That flash of devil across her face was enough to make his ears burn and his groin tighten, but she didn’t follow up on it. And strangely enough, she didn’t go for their usual and make a joke, deflect from the seriousness of the moment. “Yeah, Rick. If Alexis isn’t too upset with me horning in on your time-honored tradition.”

“No. Yes, I mean. Actually, no, she won’t mind.” Oh. Oh, she might. “We should just play our _ own _ game.”

The edge of her mouth twisted up. “That _ is _ what I had in mind.”

* * *

Kate tipped her face toward the sky, wished the sun would peak out from behind its blanket of gray. It would be the only thing that could possibly make this moment more perfect. Sitting on the ground in the park—she’d always loved the park, didn’t care how touristy it was or cliche—her stomach full of delicious food, her body warm and relaxed for the first time in too, too long. 

And her partner chattering away next to her. 

“I’m telling you, Beckett, he’s definitely a spy. I mean, look at him.” She didn’t look, didn’t move, but could still feel Castle’s energetic gesticulations. “Sitting on a bench in the park, wearing dark glasses, reading a newspaper? What else could he be doing other than waiting on a top-secret information drop?” 

“Enjoying a late-spring evening?” 

“While wearing a suit and reading a _ newspaper_?” Castle scoffed. “Who even reads print media anymore? _ And _ he has a moustache? Come on, Beckett.” 

“Maybe he’s waiting on someone—” 

“Yeah, his handler.” 

“—like a coworker or a friend. A lover.” 

“Oh!” Castle clapped his hands and Kate rolled her head to look at him. “Beckett, that’s it! His handler _ is _ his lover.” Even with the hazy, overcast sky, his eyes sparkled. “They got too close on a mission. With their lives in danger, the enemy closing in, no idea if they’d live to see another day, they gave in. Surrendered to the passion that had been simmering between them for years.” 

Kate felt her heart trip, a skipping beat that made her lungs catch and muscles twitch. “A desperate night in a shady hotel room in Brussels? Sounds a little too B movie spy thriller to me.” 

Castle shook his head. “The kind of connection these two have? No way it could be contained to a single night. Probably not a single lifetime.” In spite of the warm spring air, goosebumps erupted across her skin. Kate sometimes forgot how much she loved his words and being reminded of it always—_ always— _got to her. “Once they started, there was no stopping. Not even when it hurt them both.” 

His eyes were locked on hers. She could read the challenge in them. The fear. And the hope. It was that last one that made her stomach churn, pita and hummus and the grapefruit-flavored seltzer he’d gotten for her because he knew it was her favorite, all threatening to make a reappearance. 

They still hadn’t talked. Not really. She’d gotten a call from Gates that morning on their way in, had spent the entire commute to the precinct on the phone with the Captain trying to explain why Esposito’s cruiser was now studded with baseball bat-sized dents. The rest of the day had been spent buttoning up the zombie case, the boring reality of police work that Castle usually hated. But he’d sat with her through all of it, from phone calls with the DA to filling out forms in triplicate. 

It’d been the best day they’d had together in weeks and she didn’t want to ruin it now. 

But they had to do this, didn’t they?

“Maybe,” Kate said, fighting the impulse to look away, to hide behind the protective curtain of her hair, “they should have stopped after that first night. Controlled themselves. Lo—Relationships aren’t supposed to hurt.” 

Castle was shaking his head before she’d even finished. “We hurt those we care about all the time. It’s human nature. It’s how we handle the hurt—talking and apologizing and forgiving—that matters.” 

Her heart was in her throat, a throbbing lump that choked her, made her voice sound thick and forgein. “Some things aren’t forgivable.”

He nodded. “That’s true.” A soft feathering at her thigh made her lungs catch and she looked down, saw his hand resting on the spread out fabric of her jacket, pinky rubbing softly against the fabric of her jeans. “But most things are.” 

The softness on his face when she looked back up made her want to kiss him. To take his cheeks in the cradle of her palms and draw his lips to hers, pour every word and thought and feeling she couldn’t express into him with the soft, slow press of her mouth to his. Her nipples tightened at the thought and Kate shifted, the jacket rustling against the dewy grass. 

“Most things?” 

Castle’s hips mirrored hers, shifting him closer by an inch. His pinky swept over and over the outside edge of her thigh, a soothing metronome that calmed the raging beast of her anxiety. “There is very little that can’t be forgiven once the why has been explained, Kate. Not between lovers.” 

Something shifted inside her chest. The weight of the last month—the last year—eased, and Kate drew in what felt like her first full breath since before the night he had picked her up and carried her out of that hangar, away from the inevitable death of her mentor and friend. 

“So,” she said, nodding over his shoulder to where the mustachioed ‘spy’ was rising from the bench to embrace a tall, muscle-bound man. They kissed deeply and clasped hands, talking and smiling at one another as they turned to walk out of the park, shoulders bumping. “You think those two have a chance then?” 

Castle watched the men round a bend and then looked back to her, his face split wide in a smile that would have turned her knees to jelly and sent her to the ground had she not already been there. 

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded. “That is a true love story there.” 

She couldn’t help but grin back in the face of his joy. “I’ve missed that.” 

Castle cocked his head. “What?” 

“Your smile.” 

The heat that burst to life in his eyes was instant and all-consuming. An answering flame combusted low in her abdomen, sent warmth rushing out into her limbs and wetness pooling between her legs. Her hand lifted out of her lap without conscious thought and Kate drew her index finger across the bow of his bottom lip. Castle’s breath hitched and she let her hand fall away, gaze flicking from his lips to his eyes and then away.

His face, mouth still spread wide and eyes still lit with so much want, swam back into her view as Castle angled his torso to one side, sliding himself into her line of sight again. 

“Ditto.” 

It was all he said but it was enough. 

* * *

He didn’t want dinner to end. He didn’t want to say good-bye to her.

As the sun began to stretch across the western edge of the horizon, sliding behind skyscrapers so that the air began to lose its heat, he knew their time was up.

His heart sank the later it got.

_Until tomorrow _ was close to over. And nothing of what they were had been made clear. No ‘define the relationship’ conversation, as his daughter might have called it. What he wouldn’t give for a bit of teenaged drama such as a DTR. 

Now the light was going and so were his hopes for that clarity.

A faint brush against his hand brought his gaze back to her. Kate studied him intently for a moment then said, “Coffee?”

He smiled, a brief flash in his sinking spirits. “It was espresso, but—”

She laughed softly, curled her fingers around his wrist. “No. I mean for a nightcap.”

“Oh. Yeah, I would love that.” He perked up, closed his hand over her fingers. “Let’s stop for—”

She brought her hand to his mouth, silenced him. His astonishment was so bright he couldn’t move. She leaned in and gently kissed his cheek. “Oh, Castle,” she sighed. “If only that was just you playing hard to get.”

“Hard to get? Are you inviting me back to your place?”

She sat back, patted his knee. “Conditionally, yes.”

“Then unconditionally, yes.” He understood that, at least, and he began gathering their leftovers, wrapping the extra pita she’d bought, closing the lid on the hummus. She seemed to be paused, waiting, but he didn’t know for what. 

After a moment, she opened the bag and helped him pack up, the silence between them much like this morning in the car, when they both had understood things needed to be said but neither could find the words.

At least, that was where he’d been this morning. He didn’t seem to have such a good read on her these days. _ Telling myself a story I want to hear. _

_ It isn’t hopelessness_, he thought as he got to his feet, not hopeless at all. He had hope. He reached out and helped her stand, brushed bits of grass from her jacket.

He had hope. But he also had scars that were newly healed—

Oh.

_ She had scars. _

How idiotic could he be? That he hadn’t been able to _ get _ that until now? She had scars, newly healed, and she was being delicate with them. She hadn’t lost interest, she hadn’t been merely using him until she’d found her footing once more; it was none of those worst-case-scenarios he’d envisioned, none of the conclusions he had wildly and without a shred of evidence jumped to.

Healing was slow, and painstaking, and he kept rushing them.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she murmured. Even as she tucked her arm through his on their stroll out of the park. 

“Just thinking.”

“Sometimes thinking makes it worse.”

He acknowledged that with a nod and an enclosure of her hand in his over his bicep. “Very true.”

“It can just be coffee, Rick.”

She was using his given name and she thought it could just be coffee? “We both know it’s not.” He gripped her hand before she could withdraw it. “But there are no expectations, Kate. No pressure here.”

“I do believe I just said the same to you,” she mused, an eyebrow lifted in the shadow of the trees.

“On contraire, please do have expectations of me. I find myself wanting to live up to yours, rather than disappoint.”

She sucked in a breath, a noise that didn’t sound as light and amused as he’d been going for, and her fingers tightened on his arm. But she said nothing, revealed nothing, and he wondered what could have been his misstep.

“Are we walking all the way to your place?” he suggested lightly. A nudge as he threw away their trash, because really he’d like to give her better.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “We are.”

Okay then. “You have to promise to let me know if you get cold.”

She bumped him with her whole body, a brief press both tantalizing and illicit. “What’s the point in that, Castle? A chilled walk home just means I get to stick close.”

“Ah, I see now.” He loosened his hold on her hand and instead slid his arm around her waist, low, tucking them into each other. “You really do have the best ideas.”

“You really shouldn’t be so surprised by now.”

* * *

Kate flipped on the lamp in the front hall and toed off her shoes, swallowing back a laugh as Castle groaned and did the same behind her. He leaned against the wall and bent over to grip the ball of one foot, face contorting in an exaggerated grimace. 

“Remind me again why we walked here rather than utilizing one of the many wonderful forms of public transportation this fine city has to offer, Beckett?” 

Rolling her eyes at his theatrics—and earning herself a smile in return—Kate turned toward the kitchen. There was a lightness in her limbs in spite of the blocks they’d trekked and the long, if uneventful, day they’d had. It was because of him. Castle. Having him back. 

Montgomery had told her once upon a time that she hadn’t been having any fun before Castle had come along. She hadn’t wanted to admit it then, hadn’t really even been able to, but he’d been right. Castle had opened up her world, brought light to the dark and color to the grey. He made life feel like a celebration again and Kate finally recognized how very vital that feeling had become. 

How very vital _ he _ had become. 

“You enjoyed the walking when it led to opportunities for you to attempt to stealthily graze my backside with your palm under the guise of guiding me through a crosswalk,” Kate said, looking over her shoulder at him and reaching into the cabinet for two coffee mugs. 

Castle’s face went a little dreamy, eyes fuzzing over. “Yeah, that was good.” 

Kate laughed again, her throat almost aching with overuse from all the happy little sounds that had found their way out of her since Castle had shown up at her door that morning. 

“Go sit and rest your aching feet, Castle.” She waived the bag of ground coffee beans at him. “I’ll bring you a cup this time.” 

Something she couldn’t quite name passed through his eyes but he nodded and limped his way over to the couch. Kate measured out the grounds and water. Her coffee wouldn’t be as good as his, it never was, but that’s not what this was about. The coffee didn’t matter. Not really. 

“Kate?”

The sound of his voice, soft and unsure, made her chest pull tight again. Kate hit the start button on the coffee maker and walked out of the kitchen, arms folded around her midsection. Castle stood at one end of the couch, a glossy 4x6, unframed photo held in his hands. He looked up at her, confusion knitting his brow, turned the picture in her direction. 

She didn’t need him to. She knew exactly what it was. Had spent hours the night before looking at it, regret thick in her throat and tears stinging the backs of her eyes while she traced the image of his face over and over. That one photo she’d captured on the way to Ryan’s reception, a permanent memorial of his disappointment in her inability to stay by his side. To be still. To be more. To be his. 

“What’s this?” 

She swallowed. Nodded. “It’s a reminder.”

“Of my frown lines?” He drew his lips down into and exaggerated arch, dragged his index finger through the creases along the sides of his mouth. “Should I get Botox? Fillers?” 

Kate laughed, a half-hearted thing that died before it was even off the end of her tongue. “No. I like the lines.” She smiled at him, hoped it was better than the DOA laugh. “They’re what add the rugged to your handsomeness.”

The surprise on his face was an arrow to her heart. Did he really not know how deeply attractive she found him? How she loved to look at him—the angles of his face and swell of his arms and the way his thick, trunk-like thighs met the curve of his ass—just as much as he did her? 

Of course he didn’t. Four years as partners. Six months as some sort of lovers. And she’d never told him. Never let her appreciation show as baldly as his. 

Just one more way she’d screwed all of this up. 

Castle cleared his throat and shook the picture. “So, a reminder?” 

Kate nodded. She stepped toward him and took the glossy paper from his fingers, holding it by the edges to keep from smudging the image of his face. The couch cushion sighed when she sank into it and Castle dropped down next to her, the heat of his thigh burning hers through two layers of fabric. 

“Dr. Burke—“ 

“Is that—“ 

She nodded. “My therapist. Yeah.” 

“Dr. Burke,” Castle repeated, almost just whispering the name to himself. “Do you like her? Him?” 

“Him,” she confirmed. “And I do. He’s been—”

Kate paused, eyes roaming the far wall as she searched for the words. She had to get this right. 

Had to _ make _ this right. 

“Well, he’s been frustrating as hell at times—” Castle laughed and her own body shook with it. “—but also really helpful. I wanted him to give me the answers but—” She shrugged one shoulder.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

Kate shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. But he’s been a... guide through the worst of it. Helped me develop coping mechanisms and tools.” 

Castle’s hand closed around her lower thigh. His thumb rubbed a slow arc over the ridge of her knee and Kate listed toward him, her entire being yearning for the warmth of his body. His love. 

“I’m so glad someone was able to help you.” 

He wished it had been him. He didn’t have to say it. They both knew. 

“Me too,” Kate said, answering both the spoken and unspoken statements. 

A soft, silence enveloped them. It took on a life of its own, beating and breathing in the space between their bodies. Castle’s hand never left her leg, his thumb still brushing back and forth over the rounded edge of her patella. Kate stared down at the picture and, for the first time since she’d developed it, the ache in her heart seemed to ease rather than intensify. 

“After the sniper case—” She heard Castle’s breath hitch but pressed forward. “I went to see Burke. He asked me what I was afraid of and I told him I was scared of letting my mother down.” 

“Kate—” 

“What he told me then—and what I’ve been putting in the work to accept—is that I can’t let my mom down. Because she’s dead.” The edges of the picture trembled slightly with the shake of her hand. Castle’s fingers tightened around her leg but he remained silent. “But I _ can _ let myself down.” 

She looked at him then, angling the photograph in his direction and tilting her head. “And you.” 

Castle’s eyes jumped from the image of his own face up to hers, wide and stunned. She held herself still. Didn’t blink, didn’t look away. Made herself vulnerable to his penetrating stare because he deserved to see it all. 

“So it’s a reminder,” she repeated. “Of why the work is worth it.” 

The breath rushed from her lungs when he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her upper body against his. The picture crumpled between them and she let it go, circled her own arms around his middle. Castle nestled his nose into her hair and she curled her fingers into the back of his shirt, filled her lungs with him.

“Kate,” he whispered, breath humid against her neck. “_Kate_. Thank you.”

* * *

To say he felt extraordinarily reassured seemed an understatement. He now felt his optimism was validated, that he wasn’t a blind fool to keep waiting, that things were looking up for them, that yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus. 

He hadn’t been expecting such an honest confession, or so forthright. 

So when he finally let her go, and sank back into her couch, pleasantly warm and secure once more, he wasn’t expecting her to stand up. “Hang on. I have another to show you.”

He plucked the photo from the cushion where it had fallen, smoothing the bent corner as he studied the pained expression on his own face. Nearly accusatory. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember when she’d taken this photo. The Ryans’ wedding, clearly, as she’d had the camera up to her eye for a lot of that night, taking image after image, but it was hard to pinpoint.

From the background, which wasn’t in focus, he was thinking it must have been outside. Yes, that was the spire of the church in the background, this blur was the concrete of the steps. He couldn’t remember ever looking at her like this during the night, such blatant… disappointment.

Was she _ torturing _ herself with this photo? A reminder that she made him miserable? Because this photograph was in no way flattering—

“So there’s also this one.”

His head snapped up and he saw her coming back through the living room with a book in her hands.

_ His _ book. And from the colors on the dust jacket alone, he knew it was _ Heat Wave. _ One of his personal favorites, as the writing had been inspired and swift from start to finish. 

She came back to the couch and sank down beside him, sitting so close their hips to their knees touched. She opened the book half on her lap, half on his, and he saw there was another photo bookmarking the dedication page.

_ To the extraordinary K.B… _

She held the photo aloft. “I took this the moment after that one.”

He glanced to the one in his hand, set it aside to study the one she kept in his book instead. He really hoped he looked a lot more—

“Oh.”

Wow. Well. He looked like he was _ in love with her. _

He couldn’t help the note of teasing in his voice when he said, “I see. And you keep this beside your bed, tucked into the book I wrote about you?”

“I thought you said Nikki Heat wasn’t me.”

“You always knew I was lying.”

She laughed, a little puff of breath that hit his ear because she was looking at him and turned that close. “Mm, well.”

“Where was this taken?” he asked. Really, he was asking about the other one. Because, for the life of him, how could he have ever looked like that when he was with her?

“Just outside the church, when we walked across to the reception.”

“Ah, I see now. You were frog-marching me again. Walking—”

“No,” she chuckled, bumping her shoulder to his. “It was… a sweet moment, and I hurried ahead so I could turn around and take your photo, and I did.”

“And I was groaning in pain.”

“You were displeased,” she murmured. And then a shake of her head as she placed the idiotic lovestruck photo back against the dedication page. “But it’s a good reminder that I… can make you happy too.”

Oh, damn. “Yeah,” he choked out, nodding dumbly. “All the power is yours, huh?”

“Two-way street,” she breathed, then jumped to her feet, spiriting away the book with his photo inside it. And herself as well.

He took a deep breath, acknowledging the truth of that. She had the power to make him miserable, but so did he. He _ had _made her miserable, clearly. He’d been immature and lashing out, he’d done the exact thing he’d always told himself he’d never do: play the martyr, just as his mother melodramatically had always done. He’d withdrawn his presence from her because he’d been hurt.

What an ass.

And pushing things right now was another asshole move.

When she came back out into the living room, Castle had stood and was heading for the kitchen, cutting off the coffee maker. “Hey. Alexis wants to look at the course catalog before she goes to bed,” he told her. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t something they’d planned on doing tonight. Or even together. “Thanks for… an extraordinary day, Kate.”

She looked blankly at him, her hands empty. “You’re… going?”

He stepped into her, cupped her elbow. Her breath caught, her face perfectly neutral, giving away nothing. He leaned in and softly kissed the corner of her mouth. “It’s smarter, don’t you think?” He grazed her lips only subtly, pulling back. Her eyes lifted to his. A burning flame in their depths. “We’ll be smarter this time around, much as it aches.”

That caught breath released, her shoulders slumped. “It aches,” she echoed. That blank look was gone, filled instead with an intense longing. And then it was gone. She nodded, her hand glanced down his chest and dropped. “Yes, smarter this time. You’re right.”

“Good night, Kate.”

She walked him to the door, breathing a soft _ good night _ as he walked across the threshold. When he paused and turned around, he saw her heart leap in her eyes.

He couldn’t resist reaching out and skimming his fingers down her forearm. “Leave that frowning picture alone tonight,” he told her firmly. “Turn it facedown, don’t look at it. Read a few chapters of _ Heat Wave _ instead.”

She smiled, her teeth catching the corner of her lips. “Yeah. I will.”

He left her that way, certain she would.


End file.
